The News Blog

Mr. Sulu Phasers Tim Hardaway

2007-02-22T18:04:00.000-05:00

Okay, Jen here. I'm on Safari on a public machine so I can't text up my stuff in purple as ususal--don't see the text color thing here. Anyway, enjoy and comment away.

www.thenewsblog.net

2007-01-22T17:18:00.000-05:00

No Drama Queen Bullshit

Unlike some bloggers, who feel oppressed by the act of writing and need to dramatically quit every few months, the simple fact is that we're moving our blog to a new domain, http://www.thenewsblog.net .

Why?

Because the new blogger works better. The old site will be frozen in place as of 5:30 PM January 21, 2007. No more posts or comments will be responded to on this site, except for the previous one.

www.thenewsblog.net is now up and running and is the News Blog's new home.

The End of the News Blog

2007-01-22T17:11:00.000-05:00

The Doors - The End - live

The current News Blog is shutting down effective immidiately. The following post will explain why

So who did this?

2007-01-22T15:09:00.000-05:00

REUTERS/Mahmoud Raouf Mahmoud (IRAQ)

Disguises Used in Attack on Troops
Gunmen Infiltrated Secured Iraqi Site, Killing 5 Americans

By Ernesto Londoño
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 22, 2007; Page A01

BAGHDAD, Jan. 21 -- The armored sport-utility vehicles whisked into a government compound in the city of Karbala with speed and urgency, the way most Americans and foreign dignitaries travel along Iraq's treacherous roads these days.

Iraqi guards at checkpoints waved them through Saturday afternoon because the men wore what appeared to be legitimate U.S. military uniforms and badges, and drove cars commonly used by foreigners, the provincial governor said.

Once inside, however, the men unleashed one of the deadliest and most brazen attacks on U.S. forces in a secure area. Five American service members were killed in a hail of grenades and gunfire in a breach of security that Iraqi officials called unprecedented.

The attack, which lasted roughly 20 minutes, came on a day when the United States lost at least 20 other troops, including a dozen in a helicopter crash, making it the third most lethal day for American forces in Iraq.

Meanwhile, the military announced the arrival of 3,200 troops of the 82nd Airborne Division's 2nd Brigade Combat Team, the first unit to reach Baghdad as part of a 21,500-troop increase that the Bush administration hopes will restore order in the violent capital.

"Soldiers from the 82nd come to us ready to engage in a wide variety of operations in support of the Iraqi Baghdad Security Plan," Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, the second-ranking U.S. commander in Iraq, said in a statement. "The brigade adds operational flexibility that will assist in securing the population."

U.S. military officials said Sunday that they could not discuss the attack in Karbala in detail because it remained under investigation. But they said the version of events provided by the governor's office was consistent with their preliminary findings.

After arriving at the Provincial Joint Coordination Center in Karbala, 60 miles southwest of Baghdad, the attackers detonated sound bombs, Iraqi officials said. "They wanted to create a panic situation," said an aide to Karbala Gov. Akeel al-Khazaali, who described the events with the governor's permission but on condition of anonymity because he fears reprisals.

The men then stormed into a room where Americans and Iraqis were making plans to ensure the safety of thousands of people expected to visit the holy city for an upcoming holiday.

"They didn't target anyone but the American soldiers," the governor's aide said.

After the attack, the assailants returned to their vehicles and drove away. It was unclear how many people participated, and the men's identities and motive remained unclear, but the attack was particularly striking because of the resources and sophistication involved, Iraqi officials said.

So who sent this message? AQ? The Mahdi Army? the Revolutionary Guards? Someone who needs to understand that the US is vunerable.

The uniforms and money spent indicates someone with time to spare. I would hope dunderhead Odierno would realize that all hell could follow at the choosing of some party.

Because if the Mahdi Army is this slick, God help our troops.

Shut yer festerin' gob

2007-01-22T10:22:00.000-05:00

I'd rather take advice from a cat before I would
take if from Frank Luntz

Frank Luntz

I am not in the habit of offering partisan linguistic advice to Democrats. But in the genuine spirit of bipartisanship - seriously - I thought this is the perfect time to convey a simple point to the still-euphoric faces of Democrat activists ...

Don't twist the knife.

Let's briefly sketch the political landscape in America today.
Republicans are still reeling quite deservedly from the political thumping they took in the November election.

The polls, pretty bad then, have gotten even worse. One-by-one, key Republicans on the Hill are parting ways with the President over the 'surge' and his 'new strategy' in Iraq. And to top it all off, a Washington Post-ABC News poll taken immediately after the President's speech showed that a mere 40% of Americans believe the war is worth fighting, up just four points from before the speech.

An emerging new majority has spoken, and it is not happy with the old politics.

The Republicans are a party in peril, but all is not milk and cookies in Democrat land. The Democrats - flush with majority status - have a crucial choice right now. They can use their newly-won mandate to settle some old scores...or they can get responsibly and move ahead. They would be wise to opt for the latter.

Democracy is at its best when its practioners use language to unite and explain rather than divide and attack. The blogs from the Left and the Right be damned, the real center of America is upset but not bitter, anxious but not fearful, restless but not unforgiving.

For two years the Republican Party was adrift in meaningless messaging to support meaningless reform - and have communicated absolutely nothing for the past three months. By comparison, the Democrat majority that took Congress in November was remarkably disciplined and effective in promoting change, reform, and accountability in the weeks following their historic election.

But alas, power does strange things to Democrats: put a gavel in their hands and a camera in their face and they revert to the name-calling that kept them from the majority for a dozen long years. Sure, it's easy to land rhetorical jabs on a staggering opponent - but that doesn't make it effective. The message from the electorate in November was 'work together and compromise.' You need only look at the incumbent governor of California who won a lopsided landslide in an otherwise Democratic sweep. Cooperation works. Compromise wins. But over-heated rhetoric says to the world that you are no different - and no better - than what you replaced.

.....................

Ignore this stupid motherfucker

The GOP are the largest bunch of whining children I have ever seen.

George Bush says vote Republican or die and now, when the Dems have real power, he wants to hand out lectures on not twisitng knives?

Where was he when Tom Delay was around. Sucking his balls.

The GOP likes compromise when they are the minority. When they're the majority, they can bully and lie like it's free.

Too close for comfort

2007-01-22T09:08:00.000-05:00

Jesse Jane plans cosmetic surgery to hide
imperfections newly visible.

In Raw World of Sex Movies, High Definition Could Be a View Too Real
Digital Playground

By MATT RICHTEL
Published: January 22, 2007

SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 21 — The XXX industry has gotten too graphic, even for its own tastes.

Stormy Daniels says she isn’t sure “why anyone would want to see their porn” in high definition because it makes the picture so crisp and clear.

Pornography has long helped drive the adoption of new technology, from the printing press to the videocassette. Now pornographic movie studios are staying ahead of the curve by releasing high-definition DVDs.

They have discovered that the technology is sometimes not so sexy. The high-definition format is accentuating imperfections in the actors — from a little extra cellulite on a leg to wrinkles around the eyes.

Hollywood is dealing with similar problems, but they are more pronounced for pornographers, who rely on close-ups and who, because of their quick adoption of the new format, are facing the issue more immediately than mainstream entertainment companies.

Producers are taking steps to hide the imperfections. Some shots are lit differently, while some actors simply are not shot at certain angles, or are getting cosmetic surgery, or seeking expert grooming.

“The biggest problem is razor burn,” said Stormy Daniels, an actress, writer and director.

Ms. Daniels is also a skeptic. “I’m not 100 percent sure why anyone would want to see their porn in HD,” she said.

The technology’s advocates counter that high definition, by making things clearer and crisper, lets viewers feel as close to the action as possible.

“It puts you in the room,” said the director known as Robby D., whose films include “Sexual Freak.”

The pornographers’ progress with HD may also be somewhat slowed by Sony, one of the main backers of the Blu-ray high-definition disc format. Sony said last week that, in keeping with a longstanding policy, it would not mass-produce pornographic videos on behalf of the movie makers.

The decision has forced pornographers to use the competing HD-DVD format or, in some cases, to find companies other than Sony that can manufacture copies of Blu-ray movies.

The movie makers assert that it is shortsighted of Sony to snub them, given how pornography helps technologies spread.

“When you’re introducing a new format, it would seem like the adult guys can help,” said Steven Hirsch, co-chief executive officer of Vivid Entertainment Group, a big player in the industry. Mr. Hirsch added that high definition, regardless of format, “is the future.”

Despite the challenges, pornographers — who distributed some 7,000 new movies on DVD last year and sold discs worth $3.6 billion in the United States — are rapidly moving to high-definition.

One major company, Digital Playground, plans to release its first four HD-DVD titles this month, and plans four new ones each month. In March, Vivid plans to release “Debbie Does Dallas ... Again,” its first feature for both HD-DVD and Blu-ray.

Racist pig speaks

2007-01-22T00:30:00.000-05:00

Limbaugh: Classless Players Look Like Bloods and Crips

Posted Jan 20th 2007 8:22PM by Michael David Smith

In 2003, Rush Limbaugh resigned from ESPN after creating a controversy with his comments that Donovan McNabb got too much credit because, he said, "The media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well.'' Limbaugh no longer works as an NFL commentator, but his latest comments about football are sure to get more scrutiny.

Limbaugh's web site includes the following two statements that he made on his Friday show:

"There is a cultural problem in the NFL that has resulted in a total lack of class on the part of professional players. I love the game of football, but after every sack players are acting like they've won the Super Bowl; they're prancing around with these idiotic dances."

and
"Look, let me put it to you this way: the NFL all too often looks like a game between the Bloods and the Crips without any weapons. There, I said it."

Limbaugh has a fair, legitimate point with his first statement. Limbaugh's "lack of class" comment is quite similar to LaDainian Tomlinson's comments after the Chargers lost to the Patriots, although we should add that Tomlinson's teammate Shawne Merriman is as guilty as anyone when it comes to prancing around with idiotic dances after sacks.

Limbaugh undermines that legitimate point with his second statement, though. To compare NFL players to gang members is to display willful ignorance about the men who play in the league. Which of the top players in tomorrow's game act like gang members on the field? Peyton Manning and Marvin Harrison? Tom Brady and Richard Seymour? Drew Brees and Reggie Bush? Thomas Jones and Brian Urlacher? All of those players and nearly all of the 180 or so players on the four teams we'll watch tomorrow are class acts. If Limbaugh doesn't know that, he doesn't know much about football. Which leaves me still scratching my head, three years later, as to why ESPN hired him.

Here we go again

2007-01-22T00:16:00.000-05:00

Cracking Down on Mixtape CDs
By JEFF LEEDS
Published: January 22, 2007

Not long before Christmas, Jeff Baker, the chief of police of Morrow, Ga., a small town just south of Atlanta, and one of his officers were walking through a local shopping mall when they happened to pass a kiosk hawking rap music CDs. One in particular caught their attention.

The CD was “Tha Streets Iz Watchin,” with songs performed by the rapper Young Jeezy and, as Chief Baker recalled, it did not carry the name or address of the owner of the music copyrights, as Georgia law requires. Rather than arrest the kiosk vendor immediately, Chief Baker said, “We’d rather go after the source of the material. And at that point we had no idea what the source was.”

Any rap music aficionado would; the creator of the album is DJ Drama, whose real name is Tyree Simmons, arguably the nation’s most prominent producer of mixtapes, the name given to popular but largely unlicensed CDs stocked with yet-to-be released rap hits and free-style rhymes.

And many more people now know: last week, local authorities, working with the recording industry’s trade association, stunned fans and music executives alike by raiding DJ Drama’s studio in Atlanta and arresting him and a fellow D.J., Don Cannon, on racketeering charges. Investigators seized more than 81,000 allegedly pirated CDs and say the pair were producing unlicensed recordings and selling them without permission.

The raid sparked an outcry among many rap fans. But it also threatens to throw into public view the recording industry’s awkward relationship with mixtapes, long an integral element of rap culture and now commonly for sale on street corners, Web sites, many independent record shops and occasionally big chains.

Even as industry-financed antipiracy squads hunt for unauthorized recordings, senior executives at the major record labels privately say that they have courted — and often paid — top D.J.’s to create and distribute mixtapes featuring the labels’ rappers as part of efforts to generate buzz.

The record industry seems intent on alienating their audience

Failure

2007-01-22T00:10:00.000-05:00

Kristol On War Critics: ‘It’s So Irresponsible That They Can’t Be Quiet For Six Or Nine Months’

This morning on Fox News, Weekly Standard editor William Kristol said that opponents of escalation in Congress are “leap-frogging each other in the degrees of irresponsibility they’re willing to advocate.” Kristol said, “It’s just unbelievable. … It’s so irresponsible that they can’t be quiet for six or nine months,” adding, “You really wonder, do they want it to work or not? I really wonder that.”

NPR’s Juan Williams told Kristol his analysis was “totally ahistorical,” and pointed out that yesterday was the deadliest day for U.S forces in Iraq in two years. “There’s something going on here you might pay attention to as opposed to just the politics of, ‘If you don’t support this president, you don’t really want us to win.’”

Watch it:

Digg It!

Full transcript:

KRISTOL: They’re playing — they’re leap-frogging each other in the degrees of irresponsibility they’re willing to advocate. And I really think people are being too sort of complacent and forgiving almost of the Democrats. ‘Oh, it’s politics, of course. One of them has a non-binding resolution. The other has a cap.’ It’s all totally irresponsible. It’s just unbelievable. The president is sending over a new commander, he’s sending over troops, and the Democratic Congress, in a pseudo-binding way or non-binding way, is saying, ‘It won’t work. Forget it. You troops, you’re going over there in a pointless mission. Iraqis who might side with us, forget it, we’re going to pull the plug.’ It’s so irresponsible that they can’t be quiet for six or nine months and say the president has made a decision, we’re not going to change that decision, we’re not going to cut off funds and insist on the troops coming back, so let’s give it a chance to work. You really wonder, do they want it to work or not? I really wonder that. I hate to say this about the Democrats. They’re people I know personally and I respect some of them. Do they want it to succeed or not?

WILLIAMS: I think everybody wants it to succeed who believes in the idea that we are over there and our people are at stake. I don’t think there’s any question. I think that’s sort of a rhetorical tool on your part. But your analysis seems to be totally ahistorical. It’s as if mistakes haven’t been made repeatedly, as if people don’t feel like they’ve been misled down this path, that there’s been tremendous support for this president and war effort and it’s come to naught. It’s come to a bad place. Yesterday was the deadliest, I think, in two years. Nineteen Americans killed. There’s something going on here you might pay attention to as opposed to just the politics of, if you don’t support this president, you don’t really want us to win.

KRISTOL: What are Democrats doing that would change the 19 Americans that were killed yesterday? Nothing. Zero. Except, except no reinforcements. You guys are on your own. That’s what they’re saying.

WILLIAMS: If you think — do you think reinforcements will make some radical change? No. I think what people are saying is, it’s time to redeploy, look at new strategies, look at political compromise. That’s what’s not being done by this administration.

If Bill Kristol was responsible, he'd listen to the critics and stop pretending the surge will work

Middle School?

2007-01-22T00:02:00.000-05:00

Taking Middle Schoolers Out of the Middle

By ELISSA GOOTMAN
Published: January 22, 2007

When John Smith, a swaggering sixth grader at one of New York City’s growing collection of kindergarten- through eighth-grade schools, feels lost, he heads downstairs to the colorful classroom of his former third-grade teacher, Randi Silverman, for what she calls a “Silverman hug.”

“When I get mad I go to her,” John, 11, said amid the lunchtime buzz in the cafeteria of his school, Public School 105, on the Rockaway peninsula in Queens. “When I feel frustrated I’ll go to her. When I feel like I can’t do it no more I go to her, and she tells me I have to do it.”

Miles away at Frederick Douglass Academy in Harlem, a 6th- through 12th-grade school, teachers keep the sixth graders looking forward, toward college. One recent morning, a class peppered a guidance counselor, Michael Lloyd, with queries, from “Where is Harvard?” to “What does Ph.D. stand for?”

The two schools, in disparate corners of the nation’s largest school system, are part of a national effort to rethink middle school, driven by increasingly well-documented slumps in learning among early adolescents as well as middle school crime rates and stubborn high school dropout rates.

The schools share the premise that the way to reverse years of abysmal middle school performance is to get rid of middle schools entirely. But they represent opposite poles in the sharp debate over whether 11- through 13-year-olds are better off pushed toward adulthood or coddled a little longer.

Should the nurturing cocoon of elementary school be extended for another three years, shielding 11-year-olds from the abrupt transition to a new school, with new students and teachers, at one of the most volatile times in their lives?

Paul Vallas, chief executive of the Philadelphia school system, thinks so, and he has closed 17 traditional middle schools since 2002, while converting some three dozen elementary schools into K-8s. “The fifth to sixth grade transition is just too traumatic,” he said. “At a time when children are undergoing emotional, physical, social changes, and when they need stability and consistency, suddenly they’re thrust into this alien environment.”

Others argue that 11-, 12- and 13-year-olds thrive in the presence of older role models and reminders of concrete goals, like playing varsity sports and getting into college.

“Kids are forward-looking — they don’t get nostalgic for second grade when they’re in third grade,” said Larry Woodbridge, principal of the Secondary School for Law in Park Slope, Brooklyn, where the award-winning high school debate team will teach a middle school social studies unit this spring.

I think if you're going to have a middle school, you need to have it start at 5th, not 6th Grade. When I went to school, I started in 7th grade. But either way, I think the crucial age is 12. Whatever you do, you have to deal with 12 year olds as your focus

No kids for gays

2007-01-21T12:13:00.000-05:00

They hate gay pengiuns too

Faith & Reason: Ruth Kelly, her hard-line church and a devout PM wrestling with his conscience
Catholic-run adoption agencies should retain the right to ban gay couples, say Tony Blair and Ruth Kelly. Most other cabinet members are horrified at the thought - and the scene is set for a political holy war. Francis Elliott reports
Published: 21 January 2007

She is a devout Catholic and member of the Opus Dei sect. His leanings to Rome have been rewarded with audiences in front of successive Popes.

So, when Tony Blair and Ruth Kelly team up to deny gay couples equal access to church-run adoption agencies, as we reveal today, it is little wonder that their opponents believe it is the "Catholic tendency" at work.

"We are descending into a spiral of immorality," said Cardinal Keith O'Brien, leader of the Catholic church in Scotland, when that country brought its laws into line with those of the rest of the UK to allow local authorities to place children with gay parents, just before Christmas.

Now, a further change in the law to remove from Catholic-run adoption agencies the right to ban gay people threatens to provoke a full-scale battle throughout the UK.

Archbishop Vincent Nichols, who is set to become the leader of England's Catholics, recently warned the Government not to "impose on us conditions which contradict our moral values".

"It is simply unacceptable to suggest that the resources of... adoption agencies ... can work in co-operation with public authorities only if the faith communities accept not just the legal framework but also the moral standards being touted by the Government," he sermonised last November.

When it comes to Mr Blair, the archbishop is preaching to the converted, according to senior ministers. The Prime Minister first asked Alan Johnson, then responsible, to include a loophole in anti-discrimination legislation to allow the Catholic ban on gay parents early last year.

When he refused, the PM moved him and handed the equalities brief to Ms Kelly, whom he knew could be trusted to back him on the issue. But a cabinet row last October delayed the introduction of the Equality Act until this April.

Ms Kelly now has to produce the regulations that spell out exactly how the new law will work, and the pressure is building towards an explosive political battle.

Mr Johnson remains implacably opposed to any exemption and is being supported by Peter Hain, Jack Straw, David Miliband, Des Browne and even Mr Blair's close friend Lord Falconer.

For his part, the Prime Minister can count only on Ms Kelly and John Hutton if the issue is pressed to the point of a full meeting of the cabinet committee that settles disputes on domestic policy. Members of the Domestic Affairs Committee, chaired by John Prescott, have been expecting a letter from Ms Kelly on the new regulations for weeks. Her aides say she will send them her proposals this week after further "detailed policy discussions with colleagues".

But Mr Blair can't count on much support among backbenchers. Angela Eagle, who topped a recent election to become the vice-chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party, and Chris Bryant, MP for Rhondda, have been leading behind-the-scenes efforts to defeat the "Catholic tendency".

In a meeting last week Ms Kelly insisted that her wish to allow church-run adoption agencies to discriminate against gay couples had nothing to do with her own religious sensibilities.

Instead, the Communities Secretary said, she was acting in the best interests of vulnerable children since the Catholic bishops were threatening to close the seven agencies run by the church rather than comply.

The bishops point across the Atlantic at the example provided by the closure of an adoption agency by the Catholic church in Boston after the passing of anti-discrimination laws. It could no longer reconcile its operation with the Vatican ruling that gay adoption was "gravely immoral", it said.

At least in the UK, this is deemed offensive and unacceptable.

2007-01-21T07:41:00.000-05:00

Warren Zevon - Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner

2007-01-21T07:37:00.000-05:00

The Smiths - How Soon Is Now?

2007-01-21T07:34:00.000-05:00

Public Enemy - Welcome to the Terrordome (Live)

Atrios, stop with the shitty videos. Please. You Tube has music which doesn't suck

HDTV

2007-01-21T02:03:00.000-05:00

High-Def Disconnect
For $1,399 and Endless Add-Ons He Got 12 Channels

By Howard Bryant
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, January 21, 2007; Page F01

B

ack in August, my needs were simple. As one of the reporters covering the Redskins for The Post, I needed a television and a way to record games so I could analyze what turned out to be a five-win season. A $119 combination 13-inch TV with a VCR would have solved the problem.

Instead, I ended up taking the high-definition plunge, spending $1,399 for a far-bigger and fancier television set than I originally had in mind. As I left the store with my new HDTV, my confidence was boosted by approving nods from people in the parking lot.

Most new HDTVs have inputs for both types of high-definition cables, but not all video sources - cable or satellite boxes, upconverting DVD players or high-def video game consoles - use the same connections. Both types of cables can sell from $10 to $100, with minimal difference in quality. (Ignore composite and S-Video connections, which can?t carry a high-def signal.)

"It's going to change your life," one man said.

If only someone had told me that buying the set was the easiest part.

Since then, I have been riding a high-definition roller coaster -- mesmerized by the new TV's crystal-clear images but disillusioned by the disappointingly low number of HD channels you get in exchange for the investment of the upgrade.

My purchase put me in a growing wave of people switching to high definition. Last year, more than 13 million HDTV sets were shipped to stores in the United States, and the Consumer Electronics Association predicts that even more -- closer to 16 million -- will hit shelves this year.

Moving into HDTV had been on my mind for a while. I'd been admiring a 50-inch plasma, and its dropping price tag, for about a year, but I was still fighting the psychological barrier of paying such big money for a TV. I'd spent less than $300 on a 27-inch Toshiba tube set only four years ago and wasn't mentally ready to shell out four figures for a replacement.

And so, faced with the onset of the season and needing a second set at home, I headed out with self-restraint and intentions of saving money by going low-tech -- until I started comparing prices and saw how much they had come down.

A 27-inch tube set is the same price today as the one I bought four years ago, around $275, but a Polaroid 20-inch flat-panel, HD television was less than $50 more, at $318. A 32-inch combination TV-VCR cost in the mid-$300s, but a Samsung 32-inch HD was in the low $600s, which didn't seem unreasonable considering the quality of the picture.

So why should we get this?

Change sometimes isn't so fast

2007-01-21T00:24:00.000-05:00

Angel Franco/The New York Times

Yes, the Ill Will Can Be Subtle. Then, One Day, It Isn’t.
By DAN BARRY
Published: January 21, 2007

GREENWOOD, La.

Bullets shattered the peace in the home of Ernest Lampkins, mayor of Greenwood, La. Who did it remains unknown. To Mr. Lampkins, the motive is clear.

Midnight in a handsome one-story house on Waterwood Drive. Hours after Ernest and Shirley Lampkins say goodnight to their teenage daughter, Brett, and to the first Sunday of the new year, a Sunday of churchgoing and turkey and chili and some of those sweet frozen grapes that Ernest likes so much. Two bullets pay a call.

They explode through the living room window. They tear through the soft-yellow curtains that Shirley ordered from a catalog. They rocket past the Easter basket containing family snapshots, past Brett’s bedroom door, past Ernest’s antique upright piano, past the framed portrait of father, mother and daughter in serene pose.

One bullet strikes a golden candelabrum and splits: half whistles into a wall near the kitchen; half crashes through a French door — turning smooth glass into a spider’s web of shards — and into the sunroom, four steps from the master bedroom.

The other bullet slams so hard into the living room wall that it has to be pried out. “It was a piece of lead about the size of my thumb,” Mr. Lampkins recalls. “They use that for killing deer.”

There are no deer in the Lampkins home. Only Brett, 17, a high school junior, who has just learned to drive and wears slippers that look like kittens. And Shirley, 62, a retired high school English teacher and administrator, who enjoys gardening and makes a delectable fig cake. And Ernest, 78, a retired educator who has a doctorate in ethnomusicology and is known throughout Louisiana for reaching children through music.

Oh. One more thing about Ernest. He is also the mayor here in Greenwood, a quiet town of 2,600 a few miles west of Shreveport. Greenwood has a Dollar General store, a Mexican restaurant and some antebellum homes, including one once used as a Confederate hospital. It is predominantly white.

Oh. And one more thing about the Lampkinses. They are black.

On that night, Mr. and Mrs. Lampkins hear no gunshots, but their home alarm sounds, and they leave their bedroom to investigate. They stare at the shattered glass, and then at the holes in the front window. It does not register. Then it does.

As the police arrive to interview and to collect the shell casings from the street, it is hard to forget that several days earlier, the black mayor in Westlake, about 230 miles south of here, was found shot to death, and that some people there dispute findings that he killed himself.

Running for office can still be deadly for black men.

More idiocy

2007-01-21T00:12:00.000-05:00

Another Bag of Krauthammers

Last Friday, in his Washington Post op-ed "A Plausible Plan B," neoconservative pundit Charles Krauthammer was more openly skeptical of the surge option.
If we were allied with an Iraqi government that, however weak, was truly national -- cross-confessional and dedicated to fighting a two-front war against Baathist insurgents and Shiite militias -- a surge of American troops, together with a change of counterinsurgency strategy, would have a good chance of succeeding. Unfortunately, the Iraqi political process has given us Nouri al-Maliki and his Shiite coalition.

Krauthammer is confident that the U.S. troops will acquit themselves admirably (as am I), but that the surge effort "will fail, however, because the Maliki government will undermine it."

Krauthammer proposes an alternative "Plan B" in which we tell Maliki:
Let us down, and we dismantle the Green Zone, leave Baghdad and let you jfend for yourself; we keep the airport and certain strategic bases in the area; we redeploy most of our forces to Kurdistan; we maintain a significant presence in Anbar province, where we are having success in our one-front war against al-Qaeda and the Baathists. Then we watch. You can have your Baghdad civil war without us. [Italics added.]

Krauthammer's Plan B sounds very much like Kissinger's "repositioning" plan, which sounds very much like someone else's Plan A that's been on the table for more than a year.

And the American Army will eat how? The highways go through Baghdad and Anbar, as well as the Shia South. The Turks won't help us resupply. Kurds want Kurdistan. Not a US occupation.

Yawn, Hillary's In

2007-01-20T10:07:00.000-05:00

Clinton Says ‘I’m In to Win’ 2008 Race

By PATRICK HEALY
Published: January 20, 2007

“I’m in,” she says in a statement on her new campaign Web site. “And I’m in to win.”
Mrs. Clinton, 59, called for “bold but practical changes” in foreign, domestic, and national security policy and said that she would focus on finding “a right end” to the Iraq war, expanding health insurance, pursuing greater energy independence and strengthening Social Security and Medicare.
In her statement, Mrs. Clinton also squarely confronted an issue that concerns many Democrats: Whether she can, in fact, win the presidency. Some voters still associate her most with the controversies of the Clinton administration, and Republicans have long attacked and caricatured her, and plan to brand her as indecisive on Iraq.
“I have never been afraid to stand up for what I believe in or to face down the Republican machine,” Mrs. Clinton said on the Web site. “After nearly $70 million spent against my campaigns in New York and two landslide wins, I can say I know how Washington Republicans think, how they operate, and how to beat them.”
If successful, Mrs. Clinton would be the first female nominee of a major American political party, and she would become the first spouse of a former president to seek a return to the White House. President Bill Clinton left office in 2000 after two terms marked by robust economic expansion and a series of investigation into his personal life and the Clintons’ business dealings.
The successes and shadows of those years will likely loom over Mrs. Clinton, who was both a hands-on adviser and a divisive presence in his administration.
Yet Mrs. Clinton has become a major political figure in her own right: She is broadly popular with women, African-Americans, and other core groups in the Democratic Party, and she is one of the party’s best fundraisers and most sought-after speakers. She is admired by many independents and Republicans in New York, winning re-election last year by 30 points. While she is not associated with any major piece of legislation, she is widely regarded as an effective, thoughtful lawmaker who has built bipartisan ties

Let's see.

Only 72 percent of Americans will vote for a woman.

Hilary Clinton is the most detested politician outside of the Bush Administration.
So detested, her name is a punchline in most of America

She can't campaign for Dems outside the Far West and Northeast.

She has zero legislative accomplishments.

She supported the Iraq war

She has no national security experience

She has no defining political philosophy.

I think the Clinton campaign is a house of cards. When she is pressed hard and expected to actually take controversal stands, she is going to falter. She is a cautious politician, who despite all of her experiences, does not gauge the antipathy she faces on the left and the middle.

There isn't a chance in hell I would support Clinton, or to be honest, Obama, in a primary at this point. Neither has done more than talk and that will not cut it when we have to salvage our reputation and foreign policy.

Bush's plan falling apart

2007-01-20T09:30:00.000-05:00

Tom Lasseter/MCT

Iraqi Army soldiers from the Kurdish-dominated
units in northern Iraq at a base outside of Mosul,
Iraq, December 2005. The Kurdish flag, and
not the Iraqi flag, flies at the gate.

Kurdish Iraqi soldiers are deserting to avoid the conflict in Baghdad
By Leila Fadel and Yaseen Taha
McClatchy Newspapers

SULAIMANIYAH, Iraq - As the Iraqi government attempts to secure a capital city ravaged by conflict between Sunni and Shiite Muslim Arabs, its decision to bring a third party into the mix may cause more problems than peace.

Kurdish soldiers from northern Iraq, who are mostly Sunnis but not Arabs, are deserting the army to avoid the civil war in Baghdad, a conflict they consider someone else's problem.

The Iraqi army brigades being sent to the capital are filled with former members of a Kurdish militia, the peshmerga, and most of the soldiers remain loyal to the militia.

Much as Shiite militias have infiltrated the Iraqi security forces across Arab Iraq, the peshmerga fill the ranks of the Iraqi army in the Kurdish region in the north, poised to secure a semi-independent Kurdistan and seize oil-rich Kirkuk and parts of Mosul if Iraq falls apart. One thing they didn't bank on, they said, was being sent into the "fire" of Baghdad.

"The soldiers don't know the Arabic language, the Arab tradition, and they don't have any experience fighting terror," said Anwar Dolani, a former peshmerga commander who leads the brigade that's being transferred to Baghdad from the Kurdish city of Sulaimaniyah.

Dolani called the desertions a "phenomenon" but refused to say how many soldiers have left the army.

"I can't deny that a number of soldiers have deserted the army, and it might increase due to the ferocious military operations in Baghdad," he said.

"This is the biggest performance through which we can test them," said Lt. Gen. Ali Ghaidan, the commander of land forces for the Iraqi Ministry of Defense. The Kurdish soldiers will be using translators, and they'll start off doing less dangerous tasks, such as manning checkpoints with Arab soldiers, he said.

In interviews, however, soldiers in Sulaimaniyah expressed loyalty to their Kurdish brethren, not to Iraq. Many said they'd already deserted, and those who are going to Baghdad said they'd flee if the situation there became too difficult.

"I joined the army to be a soldier in my homeland, among my people. Not to fight for others who I have nothing to do with," said Ameen Kareem, 38, who took a week's leave with other soldiers from his brigade in Irbil and never returned. "I used to fight in the mountains and valleys, not in the streets."

Kareem said he knew that deserting was risky, but he said he'd rather be behind bars in Kurdistan than a "soldier in Baghdad's fire." Without the language and with his Kurdish features, he was sure he would stand out, he said. He's a Kurd, he said, and he has no reason to become a target in an Arab war.

Now he drives a taxi in Sulaimaniyah, eking out a living and praying that he doesn't get caught.

Other soldiers in Sulaimaniyah also said they didn't want to be involved in someone else's war.

Farman Mohammed, 42, celebrated the Muslim Eid holiday with his family last month and didn't go back when he heard that he might be deployed to Baghdad. Afraid for his life, he found a new job and settled in with his family.

"The fanatic Sunnis in Baghdad kill the Shiites, and vice versa. Both of them are outraged against the Kurds. They will not hesitate to kill us and accuse us of being collaborators with the occupiers," he said. "How can we face them alone?"

Scumbags in action

2007-01-20T06:53:00.000-05:00

Iraq Security Contractor Countersues

By MIKE BAKER
The Associated Press
Friday, January 19, 2007; 9:42 PM

RALEIGH, N.C. -- Private security contractor Blackwater USA is seeking $10 million from the attorney representing the estates of four employees killed and mutilated in Iraq, arguing their families breached the security guards' contracts by suing the company for wrongful death.

Blackwater also has asked a federal court to move the dispute into arbitration, having failed so far in its ongoing efforts to have the lawsuit dismissed.

Arbitration is necessary "in order to safeguard both (Blackwater's) own confidential information as well as sensitive information implicating the interest of the United States at war," attorneys for Blackwater Security Consulting, a unit of Moyock-based Blackwater USA, wrote in a petition filed December 20.

Dan Callahan, a California-based attorney representing the families, called the claim "appalling."

"This is a shock-and-awe tactic," Callahan said Friday. Blackwater's attorneys declined to comment.

The four families, represented by estates administrator Richard Nordan, filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Blackwater in January 2005 in state court. Family members argue Blackwater broke contractual obligations and used cost-saving measures that ultimately led to the deaths of the four men.

Blackwater's counterclaim for $10 million specifically names Nordan and not the estates or the men's families.

Or so their illegal activities can't be exposed in a court of law. The last place Erik Prince wants to be is under oath.

The battle of the exploding pigs

2007-01-20T06:43:00.000-05:00

Exploding pigs and volleys of gunfire as Le Pen opens HQ in virtual world

Violent clashes have erupted in an online world over the arrival of Le Pen's national front

Oliver Burkeman in Porcupine
Saturday January 20, 2007
The Guardian

The streets of Porcupine were tranquil yesterday; a handful of locals strolled through its shopping malls, the sun was shining, and a light breeze blew in from over the hills. There were few hints of the fact that, only days before, the neighbourhood had been the scene of violent clashes between rightwing extremists and anti-Nazi protesters - running battles involving gunfire and bombs that might easily have cost lives were it not for the fact that Porcupine does not, in most commonly accepted senses of the term, exist.

A lesson you quickly learn upon entering the online virtual world of Second Life, however, is that non-existence is less of an impediment than might be supposed.

It hasn't stopped the development of a fully-featured alternative universe in which Second Life's 2.4 million registered users build houses, set up businesses, form clubs and societies, hold parties and have sex. And it did not prevent protest from spilling over into aggression when the Front National, the far-right French group led by Jean-Marie Le Pen, became the first European political party to open a headquarters within Second Life.

"The first night I arrived at the protest ... it was ringed on all sides by protesters with signs to wave and statements to distribute," wrote James Au, whose website, New World Notes, reports on events in Second Life. "By the second night I came ... the conflict had become more literal, for many residents had armed themselves. Multi-coloured explosions and constant gunfire shredded the air of Porcupine." Some activists threw exploding pigs.

"This nationalist idea that Front National is advocating is something that has spread all over Europe like a virus," a protester, using the name Ichi Jaehun, told Mr Au. "It's [as if] the history of the 20th century has already been forgotten. It is time to say enough!"

A group calling itself Second Life Left Unity issued press releases explaining that it had purchased land next to the Front National office, and would be "manning a protest there until FN go or are ejected. Wherever fascists are, we will ensure they get no peace to corrupt and lie to decent people".

A few days later, the Front National building had vanished altogether, leaving only a few protest placards showing Mr Le Pen - who made it through to the final round of the last real-world French presidential election in 2002 - wearing a Hitler moustache.

It was probably inevitable that political confrontation would arrive in Second Life in the end. It is already home to one of the most potentially revolutionary developments on the internet in recent years - a vibrant economy in which residents use a virtual currency, Linden dollars, to buy and sell goods and services, including clothes for their online characters, works of art, buildings, and financial advice.

Because users retain legal ownership of the things they create, and because Linden dollars can be turned into US dollars via an exchange operated by Linden Lab, the company behind Second Life, the virtual-world businesses have real-world value. Numerous real firms have opened outlets in Second Life, and a woman living in Germany has reportedly become its first dollar millionaire - from the property development business she runs inside Second Life.

Racial Row on UK show

2007-01-20T06:38:00.000-05:00

Jade Goody is interviewed by Davina McCall
following her eviction from the Celebrity Big
Brother house.
Photograph: Timothy Anderson/Channel 4/PA

Jade evicted as poll reveals public anger with Channel 4

Karen McVeigh and Jeevan Vasagar
Saturday January 20, 2007
The Guardian

Jade Goody was evicted from the Celebrity Big Brother house last night in a vote which could be seen as a public stand against racial intolerance. An overwhelming majority - 82% - of viewers voted against her. In a post-eviction interview, Goody said she was "embarrassed and disgusted" by her own behaviour.

The 25-year-old from Bermondsey, south-east London, was up for eviction against Shilpa Shetty, a Bollywood actor and the alleged victim of racist abuse from several housemates, especially Goody.

Before her departure was announced, an unprecedented 40,000 complaints were made to broadcast regulator Ofcom and the public were urged to "vote for tolerance" by a number of politicians including the chancellor, Gordon Brown.

Public anger over the racism row is underlined today by a Guardian/Marketing Sciences poll which shows most people believe Channel 4 should have intervened to stop the abuse of Shetty.

The public does not believe the housemates' behaviour is representative of the country, the poll shows, with 55% believing the insults directed at the Indian housemate were not typical of modern Britain. A quarter say it did reflect society, with more than half of people believing Channel 4 had engineered the clashes to gain viewing figures.

Mr Brown, who was yesterday visiting a Bollywood film studio in Mumbai during his visit to India, presented the choice between Goody and Shetty as one that would shape how the rest of the world sees Britain. "I know that people in India say that Britain is generally a country of tolerance," Mr Brown said. "It is up to people to cast their votes, but a vote for Britain is a vote for tolerance."

Goody left the house to an eery silence after Channel 4 banned the usual crowds from the eviction show. For once she appeared to pause for thought when presenter Davina McCall told her of the political and diplomatic storm her words had provoked and played back footage of her behaviour. She said that when her comments against Shetty, who she referred as "Shilpa Poppadom", were read back to her, she thought "Oh my God, maybe I am racist".

She added: "I look like a complete and utter nasty small person - the sort of person I don't like myself," but continued: "I am not a racist and I sincerely, with my hand on my heart, apologise to anyone I have offended out there."

If Goody was unaware of the effect her words would have, Shetty was not. In one exchange before the eviction, she told Goody she did not think her a racist, but added: "You said it, its going to be out and a lot of Indians heard it. Trust me, it's not going to go down well."

No spanking

2007-01-20T06:27:00.000-05:00

Anti-spanking: Jordan Riak, a retired teacher
who calls his 25-year campaign against corporal
punishment and spanking his "life work."

(Kevin Kerr / For the Times)

A spanking ban: are we gonna get it?
Parents say lawmaker's plan to outlaw hitting children under 4 smacks of the nanny state.
By Nancy Vogel, Times Staff Writer
January 20, 2007

SACRAMENTO — Assemblywoman Sally Lieber hit a nerve when she mused publicly this week about making it illegal for parents to strike children younger than 4.

The Bay Area Democrat hasn't introduced a bill yet, but critical calls and e-mails — including some personal attacks — have flooded her offices since her local newspaper wrote about her intention.

Unbowed, Lieber said she would introduce a bill next week to make California the first state to make the hitting of a toddler or baby a crime. Language was still being drafted, but Lieber was considering making a violation a misdemeanor, punishable by up to a year in county jail.

"It would get us out of the ridiculous situation of having our law saying there's justifiable beating of children," Lieber said, "in the midst of a society where we say we value children and protect them."

Readers of the San Jose Mercury News blasted the idea — "Although I don't believe in spanking, I sure do not need some media-grubbing politician to tell me how to raise my kids," wrote one — but Lieber said she was confident that she would win Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's support.

In a Mercury News interview Thursday, Schwarzenegger described how as a child he "got smacked about everything" by his father, but has never spanked his own four children. He questioned how such a law could be enforced, but said he understood the desire to "get rid of the physical, the brutal behavior that some parents have."

Answering questions after delivering a healthcare speech Friday to Los Angeles business leaders, Schwarzenegger said he and his wife, Maria Shriver, quickly found that threatening to ground their children to do schoolwork worked well. "We can discipline the kids … without hitting," he said.

Schwarzenegger's native Austria banned corporal punishment of children in 1989. Fifteen other nations have done so, most in Europe, according to the nonprofit Center for Effective Discipline in Columbus, Ohio. California is one of 29 states that ban corporal punishment in schools. Most states — including California — ban physical discipline in child-care settings.

Nadine A. Block, a former school psychologist who 25 years ago began pushing for an end to paddling in schools, said a Wisconsin lawmaker unsuccessfully sought 15 years ago to make all hitting of children illegal. A similar effort failed last year in Massachusetts, she said.

But the narrower scope of Lieber's bill and California's progressive tendency give it better odds of success, said Block, executive director of the Center for Effective Discipline.

"Most people know you should not hit babies and babies do not know right from wrong," she said. "Babies you have to distract, remove, supervise, protect."

Lieber's proposal promises to draw national media attention like that triggered in 1994 when then-Assemblyman Mickey Conroy, an Orange County Republican, proposed paddling juvenile graffiti vandals with an 18-by-6-inch wooden paddle. Conroy was sought by dozens of radio talk shows and TV news programs to talk about his bill, which was defeated in committee. Conroy died in 2005.

Lieber said she has gotten plenty of encouragement — including from prosecutors — but Mercury News readers rejected the idea in e-mails posted on the newspaper's website.

"The day that the [government] gives birth to my children, then they have a right to raise them," wrote Esther. "Till then they are mine to do with as I please. I will raise them the way I see fit. If I think that those little butts need a swat … I will be the one to give it to them."

Having seen the way some people fetishize violence against their own children, this is a good idea. Sure, a slight tap for a toddler running towards traffic is hardly a crime, but a lot of people need a reminder that they might want to use other methods with their kids.

We weren't spanked as kids, my mother wasn't spanked. We didn't turn into criminals.

This isn't in the plans for the Kurds

2007-01-20T03:06:00.000-05:00

Draft Law Keeps Central Control Over Oil in Iraq

By JAMES GLANZ
Published: January 20, 2007

BAGHDAD, Jan. 19 — After months of tense bargaining, a cabinet-level committee has produced a draft law governing Iraq’s vast oil fields that would distribute all revenues through the federal government and grant Baghdad wide powers in exploration, development and awarding major international contracts.

The draft, described Friday by several members of the committee, could still change and must be approved by the Iraqi cabinet and Parliament before it becomes law. Negotiations have veered off track in the past, and members of the political and sectarian groups with interest in the law could still object as they read it more closely.

But if approved in anything close to its present form, the law would appear to settle a longstanding debate over whether the oil industry and its revenues should be overseen by the central government or the regions dominated by Kurds in the north and Shiite Arabs in the south, where the richest oil fields are located.

The draft comes down firmly on the side of central oversight, a decision that advocates for Iraq’s unity are likely to trumpet as a triumph. Because control of the oil industry touches so directly on the interests of all Iraq’s warring sectarian groups, and therefore the future of the country, the proposed law has been described as the most critical piece of pending legislation.

“This will give us the basis of the unity of this country,” said Ali Baban, the Iraqi planning minister and a member of the Sunni-dominated Tawafaq party who serves on the negotiating committee. “We pushed for the center in Baghdad, but we didn’t neglect the Kurds and other regions,” Mr. Baban said.

They may smile and go along, but the Kurds want Kirkuk and the oil

Provoking Sadr

2007-01-20T00:52:00.000-05:00

Main aide of Muqtada al-Sadr arrested

By KIM GAMEL, Associated Press Writer Fri Jan 19, 6:33 PM ET

BAGHDAD, Iraq - U.S. and Iraqi forces swooped into a mosque complex in east Baghdad on Friday and detained a top aide to radical anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, the latest in a series of operations aimed at eviscerating the leadership of the Mahdi Army militia.

The raid drew immediate criticism from the Iraqi government, which complained it had not been consulted. An aide to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who owes his job as Iraqi leader to al-Sadr's backing, said the operation was not part of a coming joint U.S.-Iraq security drive.

Under the plan, to which President Bush has committed an additional 21,500 American troops, U.S. commanders have been promised a freer hand against both Sunni insurgents and Shiite militiamen.

"There was no coordination with the Iraqi political leadership and this arrest was not part of the new security plan," Sadiq al-Rikabi, the al-Maliki adviser, told Al-Arabiya television. "Coordination with the Iraqi political leadership is needed before conducting such operations that draw popular reactions."

Abdul-Hadi al-Darraji was captured in the early morning raid and his bodyguard was killed in what Abdul-Zahra al-Suweiadi, a senior al-Sadr aide, called a "cowardly act." Al-Sadr's office said al-Darraji was media director for the cleric's political movement and demanded his immediate release.

"America is playing with fire and our patience is beginning to fade," said Abdul-Razzaq al-Nidawi, an al-Sadr aide in the Shiite holy city of Najaf. "This savage barbarian act will not pass peacefully."

The U.S. military, in a statement that did not name al-Darraji or mention the Mahdi Army by name, said special Iraqi army forces operating with U.S. advisers had "captured a high-level, illegal armed group leader" in Baghdad's Baladiyat neighborhood, which is adjacent to Sadr City, the Mahdi Army stronghold.

"Iraqi forces detained him based on credible intelligence that he is the leader of an illegal armed group (involved in) ... the organized kidnapping, torture and murder of Iraqi civilians. The suspect is also reportedly involved in the assassination of numerous Iraqi Security Forces members and government officials," the U.S. statement said.

It said two other suspects were detained for questioning.

Also Friday, the top American commander in Iraq, Gen. George Casey, said he thought some of the extra troops might return home after a few months.

"I think it's probably going to be the summer, late summer, before you get to the point where people in Baghdad feel safe in their neighborhoods," Casey said at a news conference at Tallil Air Base in southern Iraq with visiting Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

Asked how long the additional American forces would remain, Casey replied, "I believe the projections are late summer."

The first group of extra troops — a brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division — has just arrived in Baghdad, and Gates said it was too early to predict how Bush's plan for quelling the sectarian violence in the capital will work.

Four other brigades are to be sent to Iraq between now and May, assuming the Iraqis follow through on their commitment to bring three additional Iraqi army brigades into Baghdad and to allow raids against all illegal militias.

Gates' daylong visit was not announced in advance. The defense chief met with U.S. commanders and their allied counterparts as the Bush troop buildup was encountering widespread opposition in Congress.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (news, bio, voting record) said Friday that the Iraq war "is not an obligation of the American people in perpetuity." The president, she said, "has dug a hole so deep he can't even see the light on this. It's a tragedy. It's a stark blunder."

Democratic support was building around a resolution that would rebuff Bush's plans for more troops to Iraq, and more Republicans were looking for ways to sign on to the measure.

In an interview with an Italian newspaper, al-Sadr said the U.S.-Iraqi security crackdown already has begun. And he confirmed reports that 400 Mahdi Army men have been arrested.

The La Repubblica interviewer quoted al-Sadr as saying he feared for his life and stayed on the move constantly. His aides have told The Associated Press he seldom sleeps in the same place for two nights in succession.

Al-Sadr said his militias would not fight back immediately because Islam forbids killing during the Muslim holy month of Muharram, which starts Friday for Sunnis and Saturday for Shiites.

"Let them kill us. For a true believer there is no better moment than this to die: Heaven is ensured," he was quoted as saying. "After Muharram, we'll see."

Al-Sadr said he is being targeted.

"For this reason, I have moved my family to a secure location. I even have had a will drawn up, and I move continuously in a way that only few can know where I am," he was quoted as saying by La Repubblica.

Jenna writes a book

2007-01-20T00:42:00.000-05:00

First Twin Jenna Shops a Book
Jenna Bush and the First Lady

You can soon add the title of author to first daughter Jenna Bush's résumé. Whispers learns that the 25-year-old blond twin of Barbara Bush is shopping a book proposal to major publishers in New York City. We're told that the project is vague and that she's initially only gauging publishers' interest. The White House wouldn't comment, but others say it will be a young-adult book based on the former grade school teacher's experiences with charity causes in Latin America. It ought to sell: She's represented by super lawyer-agent Robert Barnett, who squired her around publishing offices in the Big Apple earlier this month. The profits will go to charity.

Do people realize how disliked Jenna Bush is?

How many people think her ass belongs in Iraq?

Who cares if she writes a book?

2007-01-19T21:09:00.002-05:00

Elvis Costello -

2007-01-19T21:09:00.001-05:00

the jam - that's entertainment

2007-01-19T21:09:00.000-05:00

The Clash - I Fought The Law

2007-01-19T20:56:00.000-05:00

Clash Fridays Part 1

Someone mentioned this on an earlier thread

No kidding

2007-01-19T15:27:00.000-05:00

The Carpetbagger Report has this up

Top Bush administration officials seem to revel in historical analogies, particularly when it comes to the war in Iraq. At different times, the Bush gang has referenced Korea, the Revolutionary War, WWI, and the Civil War. By mid-2005, the president had settled on World War II as a personal favorite.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is especially fond of pointing to history to justify White House decisions. When pressed a few months ago about the failures of the administration’s policies in the Middle East, Rice told reporters, “I’m a student of history, so perhaps I have a little more patience with enormous change in the international system. It’s a big shifting of tectonic plates, and I don’t expect it to happen in a few days or even in a year.” Apparently, Rice’s detractors just don’t know enough about history to make sound judgments. We should leave it all to Dr. Rice.

With this in mind, the Wall Street Journal noted today that when Rice compares today’s challenges in the Middle East to the Cold War and post-World War II Europe, as she does quite frequently, she has no idea what she’s talking about.

Her contention is while things may look bad now in Iraq and elsewhere in the region, history is on the administration’s side. She pushed a similar argument to reporters last month. The Middle East is “moving toward something that I am quite certain will not have a full resolution and that you will not be able to fully judge for decades,” she said.

Critics dismiss Ms. Rice’s references to the Cold War as both convenient and a sign of her limited frame of reference. The challenges facing Europe in 1946, they say, bear little similarity to those of the Middle East in the 21st century.

“The administration’s reservoir of historical analogies seems limited to the 1914-1991 period. And it’s all about Europe,” said Adam Garfinkle, a former Rice speechwriter who edits the foreign-policy journal The American Interest. “No one in a senior position in this administration seems to have even the vaguest notion of modern Middle Eastern history.”

When a Rice speechwriter says the administration’s top officials are clueless, you know it’s bad.

Of course, Rice’s misguided perspective, in which she seems to force modern situations into the historical models she’s familiar with, have real consequences. As the WSJ noted, Rice “tends to portray events, particularly the clash between what she calls ‘moderation’ and ‘extremism’ in the Middle East, as driven by huge, almost inevitable forces that make diplomacy impractical, or even irrelevant.” Rice personally fed that notion this week by insisting diplomatic negations had nothing to do with “deal making.”

“There’s a tendency to think about diplomacy as something that is done untethered to the conditions underlying it or the balance underlying it,” she said. “In fact, that’s not the way that it works. You aren’t going to be successful as a diplomat if you don’t understand the strategic context in which you are actually negotiating. It is not deal-making.”

Aaron David Miller, a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center and former advisor to Secretaries of State from George Schulz to Colin Powell, said Rice’s comments were so misguided, he “nearly fell off [his] chair” when he read them.

Remember, back in 2000, when candidate George W. Bush said it didn’t matter if he knew anything; what mattered was he’d have top-notch advisors?

She wanted unemployment?

2007-01-19T15:18:00.000-05:00

Diary of a goof-off: No work, no pay
A Des Moines woman details her idling on the job on her employer's computer.

By CLARK KAUFFMAN
REGISTER STAFF WRITER

January 19, 2007

A Des Moines hotel worker has been fired for using her employer's computer to keep a massive, detailed journal cataloging her efforts to avoid work.

State records indicate that Emmalee Bauer, 25, of Elkhart was hired by the Sheraton hotel company in February 2005. During most of 2006, she worked at the company's Army Post Road location as a sales coordinator.

At one point during her employment, Bauer was allegedly instructed to refrain from using company time to work on her personal, handwritten journal. Rather than stop writing at all, Bauer allegedly began using her work computer to keep the journal up to date.

"I am going to be typing all my thoughts instead of writing all day," wrote Bauer, according to portions of the journal that were entered into evidence at a recent state hearing dealing with Bauer's request for unemployment benefits. "That way, there isn't any way to tell for sure if I am working really hard or I am just goofing off."

Over the next several months, Bauer composed a book-length journal of 300 single-spaced pages, describing in excruciating detail her dogged efforts to avoid any sort of work.

"This typing thing seems to be doing the trick," she wrote. "It just looks like I am hard at work on something very important."

A supervisor discovered the journal late last year and fired Bauer for misuse of company time.

Other journal entries, according to evidence presented at the hearing:

- "I am going to sit right here and play Elf Bowling or some other nonsense. Once lunch is over, I will come right back to writing to piddle away the rest of the afternoon. ... I have almost 100 pages here! I wonder how long that's going to take to print?"

- "I don't feel like doing a single worthwhile thing today. It's 11:00 and so far I have stuck to that. ... I have managed to waste half of the day doing nothing constructive. That isn't exactly an easy task, either."

- "It's noon already and I don't feel like I have accomplished a damn thing. Accomplishment is overrated, anyway."

Arrgh.

She hated her job. Did she think her bosses weren't going to keep track of her work?

You don't do this. She should have just quit, not hand her bosses 300 pages of evidence that she basically didn't perform her work.

God, it makes my head hurt thinking about this level of stupidity.

Jesus

2007-01-19T01:32:00.000-05:00

A Runaway Situation in Seattle
9-Year-Old Gets Past Airport Security and Flies to Texas

By Blaine Harden
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 19, 2007; Page A03

SEATTLE, Jan. 18 -- Weighing in at 80 pounds and standing 4 feet 9 inches tall, Semaj Booker has established himself as a regional heavyweight in the pre-adolescent sport of sneaking out of the house.

He could be the most persistent, most creative and most publicized 9-year-old runaway in the history of the Pacific Northwest. As his mother says, he really hates it here.

Semaj can drive a stolen car 90 mph while leading a police chase, as he demonstrated Sunday. The chase ended only after he blew the engine on a 1986 Acura swiped from a neighbor who had left the car unlocked and running. The boy then refused to get out of the car, which he had crashed into a tree.

Police had to break a car window, grab him and take him back to his mother's apartment in Lakewood, a gritty working-class suburb near Tacoma. This was his third stolen car in the past month, according to his mother, who said he learned how to drive playing video games.

The morning after the car crash, Semaj came up with a new, improved runaway scheme -- one that would transport him to Texas free of charge, get him on all-news cable television and prompt a local congressman to ask angry questions about how a kid could outfox a major airline and slip through federal airport security.

Early Monday, the boy managed to sneak out of his house and travel about 50 miles to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. Police speculate he hitched a ride or stole another car.

His mother, Sakinah Booker, who is single and has three other boys, reported him missing at 7:30 a.m., but had no idea where he had gone. She later told reporters that Semaj loathes his life in Washington state, has tried to run away nine times since moving to the region less than a year ago and is "seeking a strong male figure" back in his former home state of Texas. His grandfather lives in Dallas.

At the Sea-Tac airport, Semaj did not have a reservation, nor did he have a means of buying a ticket. But he single-handedly conned Southwest Airlines and the federal Transportation Security Administration into allowing him to board a flight to San Antonio via Phoenix.

And that has annoyed Rep. Norm Dicks (D-Wash.), in whose district Semaj reluctantly lives.

"We have spent millions of dollars and inconvenienced the American public mightily trying to make air travel safe," Dicks said. "If a 9-year-old can exploit this security system, we are going to have to look into the procedure

Needs a male authority figure? Seems mom fucked that up.

How the hell can a 9 year old drive to the airport? How can he leave the house without mom knowing?

He's a very bright kid, but he's gonna kill himself and others because his mom is unable to step in and do her job.

Only in Washington

2007-01-19T01:24:00.000-05:00

Doug Mills/The New York Times

Taking Power, Sharing Cereal

SOME of the most powerful Democrats in America are split over a most incendiary household issue: rodents.

“I once had to pick up a mouse by the tail that Durbin refused to pick up,” complained Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, referring to his roommate Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois.

This characterization is not fair to Mr. Durbin, interjected another tenant in the Capitol Hill row house, Representative Bill Delahunt of Massachusetts. For starters, it overlooks Mr. Durbin’s gift for killing rats. “He will kill them with his bare hands,” Mr. Delahunt marveled.

“Oh, will you stop with the rats,” said the annoyed fourth roommate, Representative George Miller of California. He owns the house and is sensitive to any suggestion that he harbors pestilence. It’s dicey enough that he harbors politicians.

Think MTV’s “Real World” with a slovenly cast of Democratic power brokers. While Washington may have more than its share of crash pads for policy-debating workaholics, few, if any, have sheltered a quorum as powerful as this one. About a quarter-mile southeast of the Capitol, the inelegantly decorated two-bedroom house has become an unlikely center of influence in Washington’s changing power grid. It is home to the second- and third-ranking senators in the new Democratic majority (Mr. Durbin, the majority whip, and Mr. Schumer, the vice chairman of the Democratic caucus) and the chairman of the House Democratic Policy Committee (Mr. Miller).

Mr. Delahunt, a six-term congressman, is the least prominent of the four but perhaps the funniest. More to the point, he is the only one willing to sleep in the living room with a close-up view of Mr. Schumer slumbering a few feet away in his boxers.

Mr. Miller began taking in weary lawmakers in 1982, but this is the first time in 12 years that four members of a Democratic majority have lived here simultaneously. The four men were once host to a fund-raiser for Senator Barbara Boxer of California at their divey dwelling, raising $80,000. Given the prevailing attire in the place on many nights, guests were given pairs of custom-made “Barbara Boxer shorts.”

As a general rule, the abode is hardly fit for entertaining, or even for a health inspector. It is used for convenience: sleeping, ditching stuff, and fast-food consumption — the kinds of functions prized by vagabond politicians whose families are back in their home states and who generally spend only their working weekdays here.

“Everybody in the world says they’re going to do a television series based on us,” said Mr. Durbin, who was collapsed on the couch on a recent Monday night. Still in a tie, he sipped ice water from a massive Chicago Cubs cup while waiting for the Chinese food to arrive.

Despite total ignorance, I support this idea

2007-01-19T00:57:00.000-05:00

Giuliani and Kerik

Giuliani and Broken Windows
by HarveyMilk [Subscribe]
Thu Jan 18, 2007 at 06:50:01 PM PST

In an ongoing series, I want to post diaries that piss off those who cling to the "conventional wisdom" of this site. Not just for the sake of pissing people off (that's an added bonus), but to get us to think.

I support the "Broken Windows" theory of law enforcement, and I support how Giuliani carried it out. It was necessary. It was effective.

I don't care if a Republican did it. New York is the better for it, and the whole country would be, too. So there.

On a national level, we Democrats were in the opposition forever. But, opposition is one thing. All you have to do is cry foul and profess a love of America. We're good at that. But now, we have power. And all signs point to us having even more power in 2008.

So, the time for righteous rants is over. Let's get to policy. That's were you can get into some trouble!

I live in an inner-ring suburb of Detroit, and I work in the City of Detroit (all in Wayne County, Michigan - the third bluest county in the country). John Conyers is my rep. I am (in my heart of hearts) a Democratic Socialist, and not simply a "Democrat," just like Martin Luther King, Jr.

At the same time, I support law enforcement taking the "Broken Windows" approach. Is being a "Democratic Socialist" and being an advocate of "Broken Windows" policing a dichotomy? No. I'll attempt to explain why.

A couple of days ago, I emerged from my concrete bunker of an office building to take my lunch (I'm a legal assistant). I encountered a man shitting on a public sidewalk. I gave him a look of disdain. He looked at me like I'd done something wrong!

In his defense, he appeared to be homeless and desperate. The good leftist in me knows that that isn't all his fault. And, every business in the CBD has signs posted saying "Restrooms are for Customers ONLY."

But, I couldn't help but think, if it were me, I'd find an alley, a place behind the dumpster to relieve myself. I wouldn't shit in front of everyone, and I wouldn't dare act like someone else had a problem if I were moving my bowels on public sidewalk.

Detroit struggles anyway with its national reputation. And we currently have the NAIAS in town. You would think law enforcement would stop things like public defocation. But no. I walked for six blocks to my destination, hoping that, along the way, I could hip a cop to the fact that someone was dropping the kids off in a public square. Get the guy some help. But, no member of law enforcement was to be found.

I think it will take a good, strong-minded Democrat to fix problems like this. A Republican looks cruel enforcing public decency - a Democrat wouldn't. Maybe a "Nixon Goes to China" thing, on the domestic tip.

To be clear, I'm not looking for a "blame the victim" solution, but I AM looking for a "quality of life" solution.

I care very much about the downtrodden in our society. I want to invest in mental health. But I don't want to watch someone take a shit in public on my way to get my lunch. And I damn sure won't put up with the shitter getting aggressive toward me. Fuck that, with no equivocation.

And where I am, we have only Democrats to blame.

Do you know anything other than Giuliani propeganda about Broken Windows or are you a racist who doesn't respect the constitution? You can be either. But Broken Windows failed.

This is the theory famously expounded by James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling in an article entitled Broken Windows: The Police and Neighborhood Safety, which appeared in Atlantic Monthly in March 1982. They make the consequences of small-scale neglect very clear and very direct:

A piece of property is abandoned, weeds grow up, a window is smashed. Adults stop scolding rowdy children; the children, emboldened, become more rowdy. Families move out, unattached adults move in. Teenagers gather in front of the corner store. The merchant asks them to move; they refuse. Fights occur. Litter accumulates. People start drinking in front of the grocery; in time, an inebriate slumps to the sidewalk and is allowed to sleep it off. Pedestrians are approached by panhandlers.

The theory was that if you arrested people for small crimes, they wouldn't commit big ones.

However, crime in New York had already been going down because of community policing, where the police worked with the locals. Giuliani, who's antipathy towards blacks was noted, turned broken windows into a policy which led to extrajudicial murder.

What Broken Windows did was increase the number of blacks and latinos in the system for minor things like drinking outside, while whites would never be stopped, much less arrested for such activity. At one point, 80 percent of New York's black and latino males had been stopped and frisked. One particular opponent of Giuliani was illegally arrested 26 times.

But the consequences of Broken Windows created a racial divide which has never been truly healed.

Abner Louima

Louima was attending a nightclub in Brooklyn when police approached him and then arrested him. He was then taken into the bathroom, raped and had his rectum destroyed by a plunger.

Amadou Diallo

Diallo was coming home at 2 AM after getting a sandwich from the local deli. Four police stopped him and fired 41 shots at him. No gun was found, no evidence of a crime found. The police officers were aquitted by an Albany County jury, forever casting a pall over relations between the NYPD and the African American community. Extrajudicial murder usually does. The city settled with the Diallo family for several million dollars.

Patrick Dorismond

Getting off of work after a couple of drinks in a bar, he's approached by an undercover police officer. After a scuffle, he is murdered on the street by the NYPD. He had no gun, there was no evidence of any crime committed. The case is not prosecuted. His family settles for several million dollars.

This was the outcome of Giuliani's broken windows policing, innocents harassed, others extrajudicially tortured and murdered, a gross violation of civil rights.

Instead of looking to police solutions, why not work with the community to provide services for the homeless and petty criminals. People shouldn't have to die for reaching their wallet

Gunpoint at Democracy

2007-01-19T00:49:00.000-05:00

Andrea Parhamovich in an undated photograph.
Ms. Parhamovich was killed Wednesday in the
ambush of a convoy in Baghdad.

Ambush Kills an American Teaching Democracy to Iraqis

By DAMIEN CAVE
Published: January 19, 2007

BAGHDAD, Jan. 18 — An American woman killed here on Wednesday when gunmen fired on her convoy of vehicles was ambushed just minutes after leaving the headquarters of a prominent Sunni Arab political party, where she had been teaching a class on democracy, party members said Thursday

They said the woman — Andrea Parhamovich, 28, of Perry, Ohio — left the party’s fortified compound in western Baghdad around 4 p.m., heading east to her group’s offices outside the Green Zone, when she and her armed guards came under attack from all sides.

Les Campbell, Middle East and North Africa director for the National Democratic Institute, which hired Ms. Parhamovich about three months ago, said that during the fierce firefight, guards tried to escape, fought back, then called for reinforcements from other private security contractors.

The attackers — perhaps as many as 30 men, according to witness accounts passed on to Mr. Campbell — used heavy weapons, possibly rocket-propelled grenades, destroying the armored sedan that Ms. Parhamovich was in and killing three of her armed guards: a Croatian, a Hungarian and an Iraqi. Two other security contractors were wounded. The attackers then scattered back into the neighborhood.

Saleem Abdullah, a senior member of the Sunni political group, the Iraqi Islamic Party, said that Ms. Parhamovich’s group might have been chosen as a target when it arrived. “It seems that someone, when they saw her in the area, set up an ambush,” he said. “That’s what we think.”

Mr. Campbell described Ms. Parhamovich as a driven young woman, inspired by politics and a desire to help Iraqis connect with their newly elected government.

He said she joined the National Democratic Institute, a nonprofit organization based in Washington that has worked in Iraq since 2003, after working for a few months with a similar group in Baghdad.

“She was an idealistic person who saw an opportunity in Iraq to help, to work with people in Iraq who were interested in democracy and human rights, which is what she cared about,” he said.

Andi Parhamovich was a former Air America staffer and her death was taken especially hard there.

And while I am sympathetic to her friends who grieve her loss, I have to wonder what kind of democracy you can build with mercenaries.

Does anyone expect an election to take place in Iraq in the next few years? The National Democratic Institute really, really needs to rethink their field operations in Iraq. She rode into an ambush which would make a SF A team proud. 30 guys came at them guns blazing and killed a bunch of people.

Now how did that happen?

Do you think that a certain shia militia might have had issues with this? That they may have objected to helping a Sunni political party?

I think the NGO's who remain need to get a grip on reality. Hiring mercenaries, living in foritified compounds, being ambushed, if not stalked, then ambushed, is not going to help people. It will, however, get people killed.

The brutal reality is that the only voting in Iraq will be to comfirm whoever Sadr chooses as president.

Oooops

2007-01-19T00:33:00.000-05:00

Sophie Bond and her mother Diane

Girl has report from wrong school

The mother of a 12-year-old girl from West Sussex has said she was shocked to receive a progress report from a school her daughter had never attended.

The Patcham High School report, sent to Diane Bond in Hurstpierpoint, praised Sophie's performance in English but said she was misbehaving in maths.

"The school doesn't know whether Sophie is there or not but has quite clearly given her results," said Ms Bond.

The school said it regretted any distress its mistake had caused.

Sophie attended an induction day at the school in July 2006 and was due to join Year 7 in September.

But she took up a place at Oakmeeds Community College in Burgess Hill instead.

Patcham's report gave Sophie grades in five subjects but marked her absent in all the others.

Another 9/11 tragedy

2007-01-19T00:30:00.000-05:00

Jonathan Player for The New York Times
Patricia Bingley with pictures of her son, Kevin
Dennis, and her twin grandchildren, Elliott, left, and Ryan.

Parents of 9/11 Victims Torn From Grandchildren
By PAUL VITELLO
Published: January 19, 2007

OYSTER BAY, N.Y. — Five years after their father was killed at the World Trade Center, two little girls, ages 7 and 5, sat crying in a car parked at the curb of their grandparents’ home here one December day, refusing to go inside for a court-ordered visit. It was a painful family tableau rooted in a hundred tangled details, but one overriding and uncontested reality: 9/11.

Sometime after the death of Peter V. Genco, a Cantor Fitzgerald bond trader, in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the relationship between the girls’ mother and their late father’s parents went sour. The grandparents, Barbara and Victor Genco, obtained a court order in 2003 allowing them to see the children — under supervision, and for exactly four hours, once each month. In legal documents, the mother accused her in-laws of abuse and neglect, including drinking in front of them.

And on that Sunday afternoon in December, as described by the grandparents, the girls had apparently had enough of the whole business.

“We had hoped to be a part of their lives and a link to their father,” Barbara Genco, 69, said in an interview. “We imagined taking them with us to Europe, to Disney World. But it is too painful to see how the children have changed toward us.”

This sad tale is not entirely uncommon among families torn by the terrorist attacks. There is no official registry of such separations. One 9/11 family advocate said he had encountered more than 100 conflicts in which aging parents of a World Trade Center victim, desperate to remain connected to the children of their lost offspring, had found themselves in bitter struggles with a surviving spouse who would rather they did not. A mediator who helped negotiate settlements among 9/11 families in the early years after the attacks said 1 in 10 of his cases involved estranged grandparents.

A few have been to court, where recent laws give grandparents some leverage. Many other grandparents have not. Some have been wise and circumspect in efforts to mend relations with their deceased child’s widow or widower. Some have not.

“Sometimes, the spouse is remarried and just doesn’t have time for Grandma and Grandpa anymore,” said Bill Doyle, who lost his son, Joseph, at the World Trade Center and maintains an e-mail registry of several thousand surviving relatives for the Coalition of 9/11 Families.

“Sometimes, the spouse and the grandparents had differences about whether to bury or cremate the remains, or about where remains should end up,” Mr. Doyle added. “Or sometimes, there is money at stake. Or the people just never liked each other and it comes to blows over the kids. It can get so ugly, it’s beyond belief.”

Yes, you need to apologize, you goddamn redneck bastard

2007-01-18T19:52:00.000-05:00

You sure told them nigras

Va. Lawmaker Denounced for Slave Comment
Virginia lawmaker draws criticism for comment that blacks should 'get over' slavery

RICHMOND, Va., Jan. 16, 2007
By BOB LEWIS Associated Press Writer

(AP) A state legislator said black people "should get over" slavery and questioned whether Jews should apologize "for killing Christ," drawing denunciations Tuesday from stunned colleagues.

Del. Frank D. Hargrove, 79, made his remarks in opposition to a measure that would apologize on the state's behalf to the descendants of slaves.

In an interview published Tuesday in The Daily Progress of Charlottesville, Hargrove said slavery ended nearly 140 years ago with the Civil War and added that "our black citizens should get over it."

The newspaper also quoted him as saying, "are we going to force the Jews to apologize for killing Christ?"

Without slavery, a low rent moron like you would have been lucky to leave the farm to find a pig-ugly bride. White skin privledge has given you everything in your miserable life, You sit in the House of Delegates because black people were sent to the back of the bus. You even closed the public schools rather than intergrate them. For five years, you stole childrens futures.

Slavery is where you start apologizing

The Hamilton Rule

2007-01-18T19:13:00.000-05:00

Alexander Hamilton

President Schwarzenegger -- a potential blockbuster
POSTED: 5:27 p.m. EST, January 18, 2007
By Bill Schneider
CNN Senior Political Analyst

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Schwarzenegger -- how does that sound?

Some people think it sounds pretty good. But don't we have enough people running for president next year?

According to CNN's tabulation, four Democrats are already running. One is exploring. Seven others are thinking about it. The Republican list is even longer. Eight Republicans are exploring. Six are thinking. That makes 26 potential candidates.

The editors of The Los Angeles Times think there's room for one more.

"Why should Californians have their governor sidelined from the race?'' the Los Angeles Times asked in a January 14 editorial. "And why can't voters across the country be entrusted to decide for themselves whether the governor of California is sufficiently 'American' to earn their vote? It's insulting really.''

The reason is Article II of the United States Constitution which reads, "No person except a natural-born citizen . . . shall be eligible to the Office of President.''

It's in there because John Jay, the presiding officer of the Constitutional Convention, wrote a letter to George Washington in 1787 arguing that the commander-in-chief of the United States Army should not be anyone but a natural-born American. The Founders were worried about ambitious foreigners taking over the country; as in Poland, which -- at the time -- had just been partitioned between Austria, Prussia and Russia.

That's not exactly a problem for the United States today. Yet the provision remains in the Constitution, barring naturalized citizens like Henry Kissinger and Madeleine Albright from ever becoming President.

And Austrian-born Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Amending the Constitution to drop the provision has been proposed before.

In the 1993 movie, "Demolition Man,'' about a police officer who was cryogenically frozen and thawed out in 2032, it was a joke.

"Stop! He was president?" asked the incredulous officer, played by Sylvester Stallone, was when his lieutenant, played by Sandra Bullock, told him to go to the Schwarezenegger Library to gather evidence.

"Yes," the lieutenant replied. "Even though he was not born in this country, his popularity at the time caused the 61st amendment, which states that even . . . ''

"I don't want to know,'' the officer interrupted. "President?''

But the Times canvassed California's congressional delegation to find out how many would support a Constitutional amendment allowing naturalized citizens to become President. Six out of eight Republicans who responded said "yes." Democrats were more closely split -- 9 yes, 7 no.

Jen

Yes, I think the President should be born in America. As far as the Rethugs who are supporting changing the Constitution go, let's see how happy they are when they get their President Hernandez or Garcia.

No Bill, it was because the other founding fathers hated Hamilton.

Maybe it's me, but at a time Tom Tancredo wants to strip citizenship from people born in this country, why should California's idiot governor get a break

Time to serve

2007-01-18T10:37:00.000-05:00

(Thaier al-Sudani/Reuters)

This was sent to warmonger Peter Beinhart. I think he deserves a flood of these letters myself

from Operation Yellow Elephant
to pbeinart@cfr.org
subject Have you considered volunteering for military service yourself?

Dear Mr. Beinart:

Thank you for your strong support of continued U.S. military intervention in Iraq. We have a few questions for you. We would like to publish your answers on our blog.

Are you a veteran? [If so, thank you for your service.] Although it's highly unlikely that you are in ROTC/OCS/something similar, if you are, we thank you for your commitment. Have you applied for military service, but were not accepted? [If so, thank you for stepping forward.] Do you know that you are not eligible to serve? [If so, please let us know that one fact, and we won't contact you again.]

Otherwise, it would appear that you are eligible to serve in our military. Have you considered it? What resulted from those deliberations? Don't you think that someone who advocates military intervention has an obligation at least to consider volunteering personally?

If you have addressed this issue in your columns or elsewhere on the record, we would welcome links. [If you would like to keep something not-for-publication, please use brackets as I am doing with this sentence.] Thank you very much.

Sincerely,

Karl Olson

Operation Yellow Elephant

About going to Walter Reed

2007-01-18T10:27:00.000-05:00

GWU College Republicans at Walter Reed: Real Americans Push Back

From the student newspaper GW Hatchet (letters 2 and 3):

Stand up for your beliefs
(money quote para 4)

As a former Air Force intelligence officer who has deployed in support of both Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom, I applaud Gary Livacari (at podium) and Peter Glessing for taking the time to see our wounded personnel at Walter Reed Hospital ("The children of the 60s," Jan. 17, p. 4). However, I am concerned that they are missing something.

Since Sept. 11, military personnel have enjoyed enthusiastic support from those at home. I personally have received standing ovations at airports, unexpected free meals at restaurants, and many warm handshakes. All of these gestures are much appreciated, especially when we compare this with what returning Vietnam veterans endured. However, if we are to win this war, we will need something more than these gestures. We will need people at home to begin sacrificing too.

The unfortunate truth is that our volunteer force was not designed to handle the monumental task of transforming the Middle East. The stress to our troops is only half the story. The other half is the devastation to our supplies and equipment, and the enormous crisis of military readiness we face when Iraq is over. The system of contractors and corporations we have in place to replace our equipment is very slow, and one of the main reasons our troops die is because our vehicles and gear are inadequate. We need all new equipment designed for this threat, and we need them yesterday. We need civilians to demand this for us because we can't. Such demand requires civilians to sacrifice their time and energy. In today's America, it is hard to make those sacrifices. But it is what we need to win.

Finally, we need young people such as Mr. Lavacari and Mr. Glessing to join the military and help us fight. Talking to veterans and comforting them is great, but in the end, only talk. We need you, Mr. Livacari and Mr. Glessing, to fight for the cause that you say you believe in. That may mean sacrificing your college career for a while or the first few years of your professional career. But it is what we need to win. You invoked the greatest generation in your column. The greatest generation sacrificed greatly. I hope that you will too.

-Jordan Curry, GW law student

Support for leaders must be earned

The students participating in this Friday's trip to Walter Reed Hospital ought to be commended. However, a very basic truth is lost on Peter Glessing and Gary Livacari, the two individuals soliciting participation. As the death toll mounts and the sordid truths about this Iraq war are laid bare, the home front is turning its indignation against its leaders rather than its protectors. You don't see any fewer "Support the Troops" ribbons, only fewer "Bush/Cheney" stickers; that is not a coincidence. A "surge in patriotism" will come about if and only when Americans see a genuine, positive change in the conduct of the leaders who are sending their countrymen into harm's way.

-Alexander Tucciarone, Junior

OYE Comment: We agree. And President Bush can best earn that support by calling upon his strongest supporters, if qualified, such as Gary Livacari and Peter Glessing, to Be A Man! Enlist!

Voir Dire from hell

2007-01-18T01:54:00.000-05:00

In Libby Trial, Big Names Make Jury Picks a Tall Order
Shallow Pool Teems With Ties to Players

By Carol D. Leonnig and Amy Goldstein
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, January 18, 2007; Page A01

To see how small a town Washington really is, drop in on jury selection at the trial of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, where so far nearly every juror candidate seems to have a connection to the players or events surrounding the leak of an undercover CIA officer's identity.

There is the software database manager whose wife works as a prosecutor for the Justice Department, and who counts the local U.S. attorney and a top official in Justice's criminal division as neighbors and friends. A housecleaner who works at the Watergate and knows Condoleezza Rice, not by her title of secretary of state, but as the "lady who lives up on the fifth floor." And a former Washington Post reporter whose editor was now-Assistant Managing Editor Bob Woodward; he went to barbecues at the house of NBC's Tim Russert, a neighbor, and just published a book on the CIA and spying

Such is the challenge as U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton tries to seat a jury of 12 peers for Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff, in one of Washington's biggest trials in years.

It has always been difficult to select juries in Washington, where the pool is small compared with the number of trials, and half the people summoned to be jurors don't even show up. But the star power of the players in this case has complicated matters.

Libby is charged with lying to FBI agents and a grand jury investigating the disclosure of CIA officer Valerie Plame's identity to the media in 2003, shortly after the Iraq war began. He is accused of fabricating a story to conceal the nature of his conversations with reporters and his role in a White House effort to discredit Plame's husband, a prominent critic of the invasion of Iraq.

Defense lawyers for Libby contend that he forgot the details and timing of those conversations amid the crush of his daily workload and believed he had heard about Plame from Russert. Only later, they say, did he remember that he had actually learned her identity from his boss, Cheney.

By the end of yesterday's session, Walton and lawyers for both sides had quizzed 33 potential jurors and excused nine. The 24 remaining in the pool, and others who will be questioned starting this morning, still could be struck by lawyers on either side. Walton said he wanted to complete the selection of 12 jurors and four alternates by the end of today. Jurors cannot be identified by name, under an order from the judge.

Members of the government and media elite are the key players and witnesses expected to be called in a case that will often focus on the administration's justification for war in Iraq. As the slow questioning of potential jurors in Courtroom 16 of the federal court wound through a second day yesterday, it became clear that those celebrities rub shoulders a lot with the regular folks in this 13-mile-wide city of 550,000.

A nervous WH

2007-01-18T01:45:00.000-05:00

Ha,ha, fucking ha

White House tries to avoid Iraq showdown

By ANNE FLAHERTY, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 24 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - A Senate resolution opposing President Bush's war plan on
Iraq put the White House and Republican leaders on the defensive Wednesday as they scurried to prevent a trickle of GOP support for the measure from swelling into a deluge.

Eager to avoid an embarrassing congressional rebuke of the president's new war strategy, the administration seemed to hint that the effort — led chiefly by Democrats — might somehow be of assistance to terrorists. They also herded GOP skeptics to the White House, where they tried to allay the concerns of Republican lawmakers including Sens. John Warner (news, bio, voting record) of Virginia, Sam Brownback (news, bio, voting record) of Kansas, Norm Coleman (news, bio, voting record) of Minnesota and Susan Collins (news, bio, voting record) of Maine.

"What message does Congress intend to give?" asked White House spokesman Tony Snow. "And who does it think the audience is? Is the audience merely the president? Is it the voting American public or, in an age of instant communication, is it also al-Qaida?"

Initially announced by Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (news, bio, voting record), D-Mich., and possible 2008 presidential candidates Sens. Joseph Biden (news, bio, voting record), D-Del., and Chuck Hagel (news, bio, voting record), R-Neb., the non-binding resolution states that "escalating the United States military force presence in Iraq" is not in the national interest. Bush has proposed adding 21,500 U.S. troops to the roughly 132,000 already in the country.

Moderate Sen. Olympia Snowe (news, bio, voting record), R-Maine, also quickly signed on.

Hagel's and Snowe's support for the measure is a major victory for Democrats, who believe their support will open the door for other Republicans to jump on board and challenge Bush.

The resolution does not call for a withdrawal of troops or threaten funding of military operations, as many Democrats have suggested. Instead, it says the U.S. should transfer responsibility to the Iraqis "under an appropriately expedited timeline" that is not specified.

Republicans who attended the White House meetings said they emerged unconvinced more troops were the answer in Iraq, but were unsure whether signing on to the resolution was the answer

Why is the WH nervous?

Because those who vote for the resolution today will be voting on impeachment tomorrow. Abu Ghraib Gonzalez isn't backing down for no reason. The WH expects a confrontation with Congress, a real one, and it isn't liking the numbers.

And Maliki isn't acting like a puppet or grateful any longer.

The resolution fight is just the opening round for Bush and if he loses it, he's gonna lose more.

Simple point

2007-01-18T01:42:00.000-05:00

Opposing the war is not a "left" position.

It is an American position

Fading away

2007-01-18T01:38:00.000-05:00

Johan Spanner for The New York Times

Members of the Mahdi Army set up checkpoints
in Shiite neighborhoods like Topchi, in Baghdad,
but melt away when American patrols pass by.

Shiite Fighters Arrested in Crackdown, Iraq Says
By SABRINA TAVERNISE
Published: January 18, 2007

BAGHDAD, Jan. 17 — Facing intense pressure from the Bush administration to show progress in securing Iraq, senior Iraqi officials announced Wednesday that they had moved against the country’s most powerful Shiite militia, arresting several dozen senior members in the past few weeks.

It was the first time the Shiite government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki had claimed significant action against the militia, the Mahdi Army, one of the most intractable problems facing his administration. The militia’s leader, the cleric Moktada al-Sadr, helped put Mr. Maliki in power, but pressure to crack down on the group has mounted as its killings in the capital have driven a wedge into efforts to keep the country together.

Although the announcement seemed timed to deflect growing scrutiny by an American administration that has grown increasingly frustrated with Mr. Maliki, American officers here offered some support for the government’s claims, saying that at least half a dozen senior militia leaders had been taken into custody in recent weeks.

In perhaps the most surprising development, the Americans said, none of the members had been prematurely released, a chronic problem as this government has frequently shielded Shiite fighters.

“There was definitely a change in attitudes,” in the past three to four weeks, a senior American military officer said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Mr. Maliki, in a meeting with foreign journalists on Wednesday, said 400 Mahdi militiamen had been arrested “within the last few days.” A senior government official said later by telephone that the total number arrested was 420 and that they had been detained in 56 operations beginning in October. Several dozen senior leaders have been detained in the past several weeks, the senior official said on condition of anonymity. He said the total number of senior commanders did not exceed 100.

Still, some American military officials remained skeptical that the effort was more than just a short-term attempt to appease them at a time when American government support for Mr. Maliki appeared to have sunk to an all-time low.

If Sadr didn't approve, they would not be there.

He wants the Americans to move first.

We oppose the war

2007-01-18T01:33:00.000-05:00

Kevin Drum has the following up

LATEST POLL DATA....Public support for the war has pretty much cratered:

As he seeks to chart a new course in Iraq, Bush also faces pervasive resistance and skepticism toward the U.S. commitment -- more than three-fifths [62%] of those surveyed said the war was not worth fighting.

....Asked about Bush's recent announcement that he would dispatch another 21,500 troops to Iraq, three-fifths [60%] said they opposed the move, while just over one-third [36%] backed it.

....A narrow majority -- 51% -- want Congress to try to block Bush from sending more troops to Iraq.

....Americans divide in similar proportions when asked whether Congress should attempt to require Bush "to begin withdrawing the troops already in Iraq."

Exactly half said Congress should take steps to begin removing troops (42% opposed such an effort).

Somebody remind me. How long did it take before public opinion turned this sharply against the Vietnam War?

(Answer: It's a trick question. Opposition reached 61% in 1971 but never exceeded that number. The Iraq war is now more unpopular than the Vietnam War ever was.)

Thank you, Jesus

2007-01-18T01:25:00.000-05:00

Thank you so much

ReganBooks to Shut Down After Firing of Its Creator

By JULIE BOSMAN
Published: January 18, 2007

HarperCollins, the publishing company, announced yesterday that it planned to close ReganBooks, the imprint created by Judith Regan, the editor who was fired last month after public outcry over a book and television deal with O. J. Simpson. The imprint will close March 1.

The publisher also laid off 10 employees in the Los Angeles office of ReganBooks. Five senior staff members, including Cal Morgan, editorial director of the imprint, will move to the New York office of HarperCollins, while the publicity director, Suzanne Wickham, will remain in Los Angeles, along with her assistant.

The 10 employees were notified yesterday that they would be laid off, said Michael Morrison, the president and group publisher of HarperMorrow, a division of HarperCollins, in a telephone interview.

The announcement came about a month after Ms. Regan was fired. The publishing house hinted then that the ReganBooks imprint’s days were numbered, saying in a statement that “future decisions relating to the imprint name or the publication of unpublished books will be addressed at the appropriate time.”

“From Day 1, we knew we could not be continuing with that name,” Mr. Morrison said. “We didn’t want to, nor could we.”

We're playing you

2007-01-18T00:22:00.000-05:00

Yes, we need guns so we can ethnically cleanse
Baghdad

Give us guns – and troops can go, says Iraqi leader
Stephen Farrell in Baghdad

America’s refusal to give Baghdad’s security forces sufficient guns and equipment has cost a great number of lives, the Iraqi Prime Minister said yesterday.

Nouri al-Maliki said the insurgency had been bloodier and prolonged because Washington had refused to part with equipment. If it released the necessary arms, US forces could “drastically” cut their numbers in three to six months, he told The Times.

In a sign of the tense relations with Washington, he chided the US for suggesting his Government was living on “borrowed time”. Such criticism boosted Iraq’s extremists, he said, and was more a reflection of “some kind of crisis situation” in Washington after the Republicans’ midterm election losses. Mr al-Maliki conceded that his administration had made mistakes over the hanging of Saddam Hussein. But he refused to accept all criticism over the execution. When asked about the Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi’s attack on Iraq’s capital punishment laws, Mr al-
Maliki cited the Italians’ summary killing of Benito Mussolini and his stringing-up from a lamppost.

Asked how long Iraq would require US troops, Mr al-Maliki said: “If we succeed in implementing the agreement between us to speed up the equipping and providing weapons to our military forces, I think that within three to six months our need for American troops will dramatically go down. That is on condition that there are real, strong efforts to support our military forces and equipping and arming them.”

Idiot

2007-01-17T19:55:00.000-05:00

Bill, meet a real bear

O'Reilly: Abducted child "liked ... his circumstances," had "a lot more fun" than usual

On the January 15 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, host Bill O'Reilly said of Shawn Hornbeck -- who was abducted at the age of 11, held for four years, and recently found in Missouri -- that "there was an element here that this kid liked about this circumstances" and that he "do[esn't] buy" "the Stockholm syndrome thing." O'Reilly also said: "The situation here for this kid looks to me to be a lot more fun than what he had under his old parents. He didn't have to go to school. He could run around and do whatever he wanted." When fellow Fox News host Greta Van Susteren pointed out that "[s]ome kids like school," O'Reilly replied: "Well, I don't believe this kid did."

The following day, during his "Talking Points Memo" segment, O'Reilly responded to viewer mail criticizing his comments about Hornbeck. O'Reilly concluded: "I hope he did not make a conscious decision to accept his captivity because" his kidnapper "made things easy for him. No school, play all day long."

O'Reilly frequently casts himself as a champion of children. He has also suggested that he is "looking out for the kids" and attacked "the print press" for not "car[ing] about the children."

From the January 16 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor:

O'REILLY: The kidnapping of those two boys should be front-page news in your house if you have kids. I actually hope I'm wrong about Shawn Hornbeck. I hope he did not make a conscious decision to accept his captivity because Devlin made things easy for him. No school, play all day long.

But to just chalk this up to brainwashing and walk away is turning away from the true danger of child molesters and abductors. All American children must be taught survival skills, must be prepared to face crisis situations. That is the lesson of the Shawn Hornbeck story. And that's the "Memo."

From the January 15 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor:

O'REILLY: "Impact" segment tonight, the disturbing case of the two kidnapped boys in Missouri. As you know, police found 15-year-old Shawn Hornbeck in an apartment of 41-year-old Michael Devlin last week, along with 13-year-old Ben Ownby. Both boys allegedly had been kidnapped by Devlin, who ran a pizza place in the town of Kirkwood. Shawn had been missing for four years.

And the question is, why didn't he escape when he could have? There are all kinds of theories about that. Joining us now from Washington, Greta Van Susteren, who has been out to Missouri reporting on the case.

All right, you know, the Stockholm syndrome thing, I don't buy it. I've never bought it. I didn't think it happened in the Patty Hearst case. I don't think it happened here.

[...]

O'REILLY: I'm not buying this. If you're 11 years old or 12 years old, 13, and you have a strong bond with your family, OK, even if the guy threatens you, this and that, you're riding your bike around, you got friends. The kid didn't go to school. There's all kinds of stuff. If you can get away, you get away. All right? If you're 11.

[...]

O'REILLY: This is what I believe happened in the Hearst case and in this case. The situation that Hearst found herself in was exciting. She had a boring life. She was a child of privilege. All of a sudden, she's in with a bunch of charismatic thugs, and she enjoyed it. The situation here for this kid looks to me to be a lot more fun than what he had under his old parents. He didn't have to go to school. He could run around and do whatever he wanted.

VAN SUSTEREN: Some kids like school.

O'REILLY: What?

VAN SUSTEREN: Some kids like school.

O'REILLY: Well, I don't believe this kid did. And I think when it all comes down, what's going to happen is, there was an element here that this kid liked about his circumstances.

[...]

VAN SUSTEREN: So you're playing that same sort of thinking to this 11-year-old to 15-year-old. You're thinking logically. You think to yourself, "Why didn't he leave?" That's what most people think. Frankly, I had that thought as well.

But I think you've got to remember that this is a child. He doesn't -- you know, for whatever reason, he may have, you know, wanted to be with his kidnapper. Maybe his kidnapper turned out to be, quote, "a nice guy" or whatever. But this is a kid, Bill. And I think we've got to wait till we get all the facts.

O'REILLY: All right.

VAN SUSTEREN: It may turn out -- you may turn out to be right. I don't know.

O'REILLY: I usually do. I usually -- that usually is what happens.

VAN SUSTEREN: Especially when you're the jury.

O'REILLY: If I'm wrong, Greta, I'll -- you know, we'll play this tape and you'll get your points.

VAN SUSTEREN: At this point, I simply don't know. But I'll wait for the facts.

O'REILLY: All right. Greta will have more, On the Record, 10 Eastern. Thanks, Greta, as always.

This is bullshit.

All that freak had to do was say he was going to kill his family and that's it.

Fucking idiot O'Reilly

Libby on trial

2007-01-17T17:31:00.000-05:00

FDL and the Huffington Post are doing daily coverage of the Libby trial. Which is of minimal interest to me with Iraq at full boil but this is funny.

Libby Trial Jury Selection: Day One Recap of Libby’s Dilemma

By: Pachacutec

"I am completely without objectivity. There is nothing you can say that would make me feel positively about President Bush."*

Thus spake the eighth of nine prospective jurors reviewed by Judge Reggie Walton, Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald and defense attorneys Ted Wells and William Jeffress today. She had indicated on her juror form she had some strong opinions about the Bush administration, and, queried in her turn by Judge Walton, she cast her eye over all assembled in the courtroom and declared herself.

"So, you are saying you do not believe you could render a fair and impartial verdict in this case, based on the evidence and according to my instructions to the jury prior to deliberations?," Judge Walton followed.

"That's right," she responded, whereupon she was immediately excused from jury duty.

The juror who preceded her took a bit longer, with much questioning and circling around questioning by Mr. Wells, before confessing that, though he would like to think otherwise, it is likely the case that his opinion of Vice President Cheney's credibility is so low that, were sworn testimony offered by Cheney to be contradicted by another witness, the prospective juror would be hard pressed not the feel predisposed to find the vice president unbelievable. This juror, of the nine reviewed today, actually knew the most about the backstory of the case, even to the point of naming Richard Armitage as the first to leak Valerie Plame's identity as a CIA agent.

To assess the tenor of the news coverage this juror had previously read, Ted Wells asked this juror if he reads blogs. "Yes," he replied. "Which ones?" asked Wells. "Andrew Sullivan. Time. Wonkette. Powerline, occasionally, and the Huffington Post, occasionally (hello to you, dude!). . . Some of them are pretty good. I stay away from the crazies.” The media room erupted in laughter, as I took a seated bow.

He was excused from the jury for his admission that he could not assure the court his assessment of the vice president would not color his thinking about testimony and evidence.

Therein lies the challenge for Team Libby: of the nine jurors reviewed in depth today, three were excused. Two I've described to you, and one was excused due to the demands on her time of her work commitments as a free lance contractor paying the rent month to month. What's telling is this: no jurors were excused for cause based on any predispositions that might prejudice them against the prosecution. Just the defense.

Libby has a war problem, and though this case is narrowly about felony charges of obstruction of justice and perjury, wherein the case for war in Iraq provides only the setting, the unavoidable drama and context of this case is the case made for war in Iraq and the credibility of this administration, and in particular, the Office of the Vice President.

The national polls are what they are. The president is wildly unpopular and growing more so with his every subsequent utterance; Dick Cheney is even less popular than President Bush. The public overwhelmingly is rejecting the administration's policies and reluctantly coming to the conclusion that, at best, the administration innocently provided bad information to the country, but is intransigent in the face of developing reality. And through all this, to attempt to get a fair trial, Team Libby must scratch to find jurors without strong opinions or preconceptions on these matters, in Washington, DC, of all places (more than one potential juror, when asked if they had heard or read of any controversy alleging the administration had provided the country with bad information in making its case for war, replied, "In this town? Are you kidding?").

The Libby team's jury selection strategy seems rather clear: if they can find at least one, and preferably two, people who are among that 12% of the population in support of the administration's "surge" strategy to escalate the war in the Middle East, that would be golden. Two such people, or at least one, could possibly hold out against what otherwise might be a consensus to convict, possibly even nullifying the jury, if it came to that. Generally, the demographics that hurt the administration hurt the defense team: women (especially single women), minorities, working people or union members, liberal professionals, etc. The problem for team Libby is, their best jurors live in Salt Lake City, not Washington, DC.

Patrick Fitzgerald has a reputation for not making a big fuss over jurors during jury selection, and he lived up (down?) to that reputation today. He is mostly content to take people at their word if they say they believe they can render a fair and impartial judgment based on the evidence and according to the Judge's instructions. He seems most likely to verify that those with previous experience or exposure to the criminal justice system (as victims of crime, or who have family members of those who are policeman, etc.) believe they possess no strong biases or opinions based on those connections or experiences that might render them unable to deliberate in good faith. He can also be slyly charming. As one woman mentioned she has three children, Fitzgerald responded, "I take it these are young children?" Instantly, and with a southern twang, the woman countered, "Oh, aren't you sweet!"

The Libby team is far more intent and active in its questioning of potential jurors. Beyond probing about any preconceptions potential jurors might possess related to the administration or the vice president, Wells and Jeffress seem regularly to ask about people's opinions of Tim Russert. Clearly, they seem worried about anyone who might be predisposed to think so highly of Russert that, when the time comes for his testimony to contradict Libby's statements, prospective jurors may reflexively side with Russert.

Team Libby furthermore seems very concerned about the news accounts people have read, as is understandable, given the profile of this case. What's more, Libby's lawyers regularly ask pro forma questions about the possibility of forgetting things, and about the possibility that different accounts of past events could be due to bad recollections held in good faith. Their questions are so mundane, however, it seems to me as if they are just using the questions to presell their case, a foretaste of the closing defense argument.

In the end, there will be a jury empaneled, and though the pace of juror review slogged along slowly today, the people at the courthouse seem to think we'll be done by Thursday. If today is any indication, the best Team Libby can hope for would be jurors who can give them a fair shake, enough of whom may have enough trust and faith in the president and the vice president to trust that their ex-employee, Irving "Scooter" Libby, is telling the truth. Today's jurors don't seem to show signs of being among those true believers in the administration's aggressive war policies, but then again, you never know with a jury, and people can and do surprise you.

Tomorrow, we go through another round of jury selection, and we'll know more about the potential jury pool. Stay tuned to the Firedoglake and the Huffington Post for liveblogging and daily coverage.

What are people afraid of?

2007-01-17T16:45:00.000-05:00

Chris Bowers has a post up on the most recent attack on the Netroots, but he misses a point about the genesis of this.

It's funny to see people worried about the intellectual forment of the Netroots. It's kind of like worrying if your boss wears pink socks.

The power of people on the Internet is that they can act to preserve their own interests. The Internet is a tool which makes communication easier. It isn't a panacea nor does it create its own structures. The only value of the net, for most people, is a way to make connections.

Until very recently, there was a lot of concern about the engagement of the American people in politics. They didn't vote, they weren't interested in politics. But technology can liberate and strengthen people because they can work together without the endless debate which occurs in meetings.

It also allows for goal-centered activism.

What I think Chris doesn't get, or a lot of the younger people who blog is this: they don't like outsiders. Look at the structure of liberal activist groups. By their hiring practices, they exclude the average American. These people have invested their careers in this structure and have benefitted from it.

The last thing they want to deal with is an Ohio housewife who wants a voice in national politics. They want to tell her what to think, not to listen to her ideas. She isn't a member of the club, no matter how smart she is.

You have people who's recent record makes the Knicks look like champions attacking what has worked. They have a better way for you to succeed when you have and they haven't.

The whole canard of anti-intellectualism is basically "Shut up, meathead" for the 21st Century. Because it isn't an intellectual argument, but one of class. You're stupid because you are not part of them. Not because your arguments make no sense.

What these people are afraid of is a loss of status. When average people start taking a role in politics and are successful at it, they lose the mojo they have created. If someone in Seattle writes better than Joe Klein, why does Joe Klein still have a job?

So they seek to diminish the effectiveness of the Netroots to attack it's credibility and keep their own status intact.

Of course, most people empowered by the Internet could give a fuck what these people think. They failed so badly that these people had to do for themselves what others couldn't.

So let them have their silly arguments while people change the world around them.

The Car Wreck of American TV

2007-01-17T09:58:00.000-05:00

REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni
These people mostly suck

'Idol's' Trying Times

By Lisa de Moraes
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, January 17, 2007; C01

Early audition episodes on "American Idol" are the torture camp of show business.

We feel really bad about it.

But we like to watch.

Judges Randy Jackson, Simon Cowell and Paula Abdul are back with their bag of ego deflators. Only this time, Jackson is the bad cop, Simon is the good cop, and Abdul appears to be all sober and normal and obeying the Geneva Conventions. What fun is that?

Singing star/poet Jewel is guest-judging; she's sitting next to Jackson, who told the press a few days ago he thinks the guest judges are hooey and shouldn't be mixing it up with the three regulars.

The judges jump right in, bringing "Idol" wannabe Jessica Rhode to tears.

"I don't want to patronize you but it's never gonna work for you, darling," Simon sneers.

"I'm sorry but we're trying to find the best, and that was so far away from it."

"Oh my God!" Rhode wails.

"No way. Please no, please!" she begs.

"The good news is today you found out you're not going to be [a singer] so you can just -- move on," Simon says therapeutically while she weeps.

Rhode seeks comfort from her family outside. "I really thought I had it. I thought I was ready. They said I'm not even a good singer," she sobs.

Mr. Urban Amish, Troy Benham, follows. He's never seen "American Idol," does not own a "broadcast television setup in my home."

He sings them a song that involves spit dripping into someone's face. And roaches. We're not familiar with that tune.

The judges begin to lacerate him; he puts up a good fight.

"I didn't say I was great. I didn't say I was the best and I certainly didn't say I was the next American Idol," Benham says.

Next, Jesse Holloway walks out midway through his audition, saying he's "real nervous right now." He takes a drink and returns.

"Why did you come back into the room?" Simon asks. "When you left, for once we were on the same page."

Outside the audtion room, Jesse unloads, saying Randy "needs to wipe off the damned makeup he's got on his face."

Which is funny, because we were thinking that Randy was looking much prettier this season for reasons we could not explain. Thank you, Jesse Holloway, for providing answers.

"When was the last time Paula made a record?" Holloway continues, now on a roll. "They can kiss my [heinie]. They need to be fired because they don't know what they're talking about."

When I was in high school, I sang in my school choir. My younger sister took piano an voice. We love this. Most people have no clue that they suck. And some are unclear that this is a contest to spend a million on you. Dressing like Apollo Creed does not inspire confidence.

But what I like most about this is the way it shows how little people know about themselves and their abilities. Off key, out of tune, poor Jewel looked like she was being tortured. Most people have no idea of what it takes to b a professional singer. No idea at all.

And it's amusing to watch.

But you have to keep in mind, they do find a winner.

A history lesson

2007-01-17T08:16:00.000-05:00

Walter Reuther

I find fantasists like Max Sawicky amusing.

They talk about some never never land where people did things right and how we should all just repeat what they did.

The New Left was a minor participant in social change because it was disconnected from the masses. It was really college kids and some activists reading Marx and talking. I've read Marx. I don't think I'll get back the hours I spent pouring through Das Kapital. How that helps fund a charter school is beyond me, but practical results often elude the current left.

For someone so contemptuous of people acting on their own, and waiting for the next leader, I think we need to discuss when being on the left wasn't what people did in dorm rooms and meeting halls.

There has probably been no more effective leftist in American history than Walter Reuther. The head of the UAW in the 1930's and 40's, he didn't debate Marx, he fought union goons in the streets of Detroit. He didn't have theories, but practical goals which improved people's lives.

I don't think Max, with his romance with the words of the New Left, would be able to identify the most critical adjustments to the class structure in the US.

The GI Bill and the UAW contract of 1946. Both built the structure of modern American society in the face of conservative opposition. It was the determination to provide the benefits of the GI Bill, a college education or a home, which changed America. The UAW contract of 1946 established the benefits we now take for granted, vacation, 8 hour work day.

Now, you can sit in a room and read Marx, or you can actually organize and lead people. Harry Bridges was as left as you could get and he spent his time organizing dock workers in the face of goons.

The netroots represents the left which actually does something, not the circle jerk of academics and the isolation from the working class which doomed so many of the New Left's ideas.
Which is why it scares people. The fact is that left academics no more like housewives in politics than the right think tankers. They don't feel these people are worthy because they haven't read Marx. Changing lives? Not so important. Doctrinare leftist thought, important.

Poor Max thinks it's important that people read Marx and Marcuse. How many people did his new left heroes actually elect to office? Because that is how we make change in this country. They were beyond electoral politics. They thought they could convince the poor of their ways by quoting authors they never cared about.

What Max will realize about his version of the left is that it never does anything. I don't care if the local activists read Malcolm X. If they stop a landfill in their neighborhood, I think they've done more to prove collective action works. Then he lauds the "direct action forces" the people who disrupt Davos and other gatherings. And that, my friend, is where the romance of the New Left runs into reality. You don't think most of those groups are infiltrated by everyone from SISMI to the Bundespolizei to MI6?

While they're hopping around and getting arrested, they are quickly shoved aside as theater. They may have mobilized, but their arrest record is longer than their accomplishments. But that is what happens when you see politics in romantic instead of practical terms. Protest is less important than controlling who sits in government.

The fact is that the only place his version of the left has worked is in a conference room. Most people have neither the time nor tolerance for it.

The war was wrong

2007-01-17T08:02:00.000-05:00

Kevin Drum, in trying to defend his support for the debable in Iraq when it started, makes an especially stupid analogy

I'm not sure I see it. The fact that Iraq is a clusterfuck doesn't demonstrate that preemptive war is wrong any more than WWII demonstrated that wars using Sherman tanks are right. It's the wrong unit of analysis. After all, Iraq didn't fail because it was preemptive (though that didn't help); it failed either because George Bush is incompetent or because militarized nation building in the 21st century is doomed to failure no matter who does it. Preemption per se had very little to do with it, and the argument against preemptive war, which is as much moral as pragmatic, is pretty much the same today as it was in 2002.

Kevin, Irvine has some really nice book stores. I suggest you hit them.

First of all, using Shermans was wrong in WWII because they were death traps. But there was no other tank. So people fought and died in them.

No, Iraq failed because ALL colonial wars fail. Stanley Karnow, Bernard Fall, Alistair Horne all have wonderful books which make this point. The Osprey series of monographs also help.

But colonial warfare, whether you call it preemption or mission civilitrice, ends the same, with the locals trying to kill you. If you read Thomas Pakenham, you would think colonial wars ended when the Europeans established colonies, but they never did. There was always a local rebellion or something until the Europeans left.

Iraq failed because the US wanted to impose a government on the Iraqi people and they would rather follow Moqtada Sadr. We could have predicted this, if we chose to. We did not.

The war was wrong in 2002 and is wrong today.

No more actors

2007-01-17T01:36:00.000-05:00

Is Live Sex On-Demand Coming to Hotel TVs?

By DAVID CAY JOHNSTON
Published: January 17, 2007

LAS VEGAS, Jan. 16 — In the world of on-demand viewing of sexually explicit material, the next step could be the ability to watch live performers from the privacy of a hotel room.

That was one topic during a panel discussion here at Internext, an annual trade show for sex entertainment industry producers, marketers and payment processors.

Gregory Clayman, the owner of the live-action company Video Secrets, predicted that the industry would soon be selling not just videos on demand in mainstream hotels, but images of people having sex live over the hotels’ entertainment systems.

“We feel that live, right now, is coming of age,” Mr. Clayman said. “We are planning to make the jump to hotel rooms.”

He said that as television sets and computers merge into the same appliance, he saw no reason that live action sex would not get a place in on-demand services in hotels. Some existing Web sites already allow customers to send text messages to direct the performers.

Americans spent $1.6 billion last year for on-demand and pay-per-view video, according to JupiterKagan, a media research firm. It estimates that about a third of those sales were for sex films.

Anne Taulane, managing editor of Lodging magazine, who has written about the ways hotel chains require sex films to be edited and about groups that oppose any such films, expressed doubt that the major hotel chains would ever go along.

“That would be a hard sell to the big hotel companies,” she said in a telephone interview. “The porn offered now is a little more acceptable to the mainstream” than viewing live action over a hotel’s video entertainment system.

Panelists also praised Visa and MasterCard for new programs that have helped reduce disputes and refusals to pay for pornography ordered over the Internet by credit card.

Good luck, Jane

2007-01-17T01:26:00.000-05:00

Jane Hamsher is going into the hospital for her third bout with breast cancer.

Jen and I wish her luck, because no matter how brave your face, it's scary to face that.

I'll be posting on FDL over the weekend.

This makes me laugh

2007-01-17T00:38:00.000-05:00

The Ballad of the Yellow Berets

By commenter Democommie:

The Ballad of the Yellow Beret
(to the tune of "The Ballad of the Green Berets")

We are tough, young Republicans
We fight with words (but never guns)
We show support by drinking beer.
But since we’re rich we’ll stay right here.

(chorus)
Chicken wings suit me just fine
They go so well with my yellow spine
I’ll ply my trade while you’re overseas
When you return, your job will speak Chinese

I’m like my grandpop and my dad,
Those terrorist bastards make me mad;
But I’m a Stanford B-school grad;
So I’ll not be going to Baghdad

(Chorus)
Chicken wings suit me just fine
They go so well with my yellow spine
The poor man’s born to join the fray
I was born rich, I’ll get an MBA

I just can’t share the poor man’s fate
Cause at the Frat House hot babes wait
Just like Dubya I get “C’s”,
And like Dick, I got “Priorities”

(Chorus)
Chicken wings suit me just fine
They go so well with my yellow spine
We strut like cocks in our “Old School” halls
We’re really hens, we’re lacking balls

More dead in Iraq

2007-01-17T00:07:00.000-05:00

Bombings Kill 60 at University In Baghdad
34,452 Iraqi Civilians Died Violently in '06, U.N. Says

By Joshua Partlow
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, January 17, 2007; Page A01

BAGHDAD, Jan. 16 -- The coordinated detonation of two bombs during the after-school rush at a Baghdad university killed at least 60 people Tuesday and wounded more than 140 in what university officials described as one of the deadliest attacks on academia since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

The spate of killings, which also included a bombing outside a Sunni Muslim shrine in a predominantly Shiite neighborhood of central Baghdad, made plain the difficulties facing U.S. and Iraqi troops poised for their latest effort to tamp down rampant violence in the capital. It coincided with a report from the United Nations that said 34,452 Iraqi civilians died violently last year -- an average of 94 per day -- an estimate nearly triple the death toll provided by three Iraqi government ministries.

Gianni Magazzeni, chief of the U.N. Assistance Mission for Iraq, said the killings were driven by strife between Sunni and Shiite militants. "Without significant progress in the rule of law, sectarian violence will continue indefinitely and eventually spiral out of control," he said.

News agencies reported that at least 30 other people died violently in Iraq on Tuesday, bringing the day's total to about 100.

At Mustansiriya University, sophomore Dyana Ayad had finished her Arabic elocution test, then walked through the college gardens, turned right toward a pedestrian overpass and joined the crowd of students waiting for buses. The pressure filled her ears a split second before she heard the sound of a bomb.

"I saw unbelievable things," the 20-year-old recalled Tuesday night. "There were tiny pieces of papers, burned papers everywhere. And dark smoke, white smoke. . . . I saw arms, legs, body parts flying in the air. The sky was raining burning paper and body parts."

Firefighters and police sped to the scene of the wreckage, near Palestine Street in eastern Baghdad, doused the flaming cars and buses, and ferried bloodied students to hospitals throughout the city. Students ran in panic to find their friends, witnesses said, picking through what one student called "pieces of meat."

The university's assistant president, Fadhil al-Amri, found a human head on the ground outside his office, next to a severed hand.

I don't know

2007-01-16T19:23:00.000-05:00

Walter Reed Welcomes [?] College Republicans, Friday Evening, January 19, 2007

The George Washington University (GWU) College Republicans have scheduled a visit to the Wounded Warriors at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., this coming Friday evening, January 19. Money quotes:

- - - - - -
But the political cynicism prevalent on GW's campus and across our nation tells a different and more disturbing story. Like our parents in Vietnam, we have lost the will to fight, to make the sacrifices that are necessary to protect our country. We have substituted healthy patriotism and deep reverence for American traditions with petty protests and condemnations of our nation's highest leaders.

- - - - - -
Our generation has been courageous in combat, but the home front has yet to wholeheartedly endorse America's historic mission to transform the Middle East. Generation Y, which includes the GW student community, has denied the troops the steadfast support required for victory. Unless we vigorously defend the mission in Iraq, our country will again suffer a devastating defeat and its reputation will be irreparably damaged. We can't let this happen.

With President Bush's recent proposal to commit more than 20,000 new American troops to Baghdad, our generation has an opportunity to renew its devotion to winning the war on terror and earn its billing as the new greatest generation. The GW College Republicans will do its part to answer this critical calling.

We invite all students, regardless of party affiliation, to join us in visiting wounded American soldiers at Walter Reed Hospital this Friday night. While war is an understandable source of disagreement, we must transcend partisan divisions and facilitate broad-based support for the men and women of the armed forces.
- - - - - -

All visitors to Walter Reed are welcome (most especially young women). This includes veterans, ROTC/OCS/etc., and anyone not personally eligible to serve. Your support is greatly appreciated.

However, if the best that the other male GWU College Republicans -- all healthy heterosexuals eligible to serve -- can do to answer this "critical calling" is visit our Wounded Warriors in the hospital, they might as well just stay home.

Otherwise, they should be prepared for a real Wounded Warrior (already more of a man than any of them will ever be) to candidly and frankly urge the GWU College Republicans to Be A Man! Enlist! right there. Chickenhawk pussy excuses won't cut it, so why don't you do everyone a favor and let the female GWU College Republicans go by themselves?

I think some of these dumb fucks need to go to Walter Reed and see their peers surviving Bush's war. But I think if they treat it like a freak show, or start in with Bushie bullshit, some of them are going to find how much a prostethic leg hurts when it kicks you in the ass.

My hope is that they realize that their words are bullshit and the men and women they want to visit deserve dignity and respect.

Dear Max

2007-01-16T10:09:00.000-05:00

Max,

A man often has to be stripped of his delusions, especially when creating heroes. But unless I'm confused, both the Weathermen and Panthers had their roots in SDS and SNCC. And I would say when you get into the bomb and gun business, you've slipped into terrorism.

And, Max, some of the netroots started out as campaign consultants and others HAVE morphed into them. Which sort of undercuts your point, but that's OK. They've chosen to do that. Not my choice, but it's there.

I hate to tell you, but American politics has always been shallow. Mistresses, bastard kids, religion have always had a role, just like Obama's name and Kerry's personality. Thomas Jefferson was dogged with rumors of his having a black mistress.

You seem to have this fantasy that political power comes from some combination of good intentions and honesty The fact is that the left, from the Greens down to Avakian's bunch, have either debated everything to death or created a cult of personality. I don't think you know what political power is. I mean, you have an idea of what it is, but you don't really get how it works, because it's all theory to you.

Let's say you want a parking spot outside your store. A mundane thing, but people need them. How do you get it? You can apply for one, or you can call the mayor, who you supported and ask him for help. That's power in action, getting things done. If you haven't noticed, Labor's power to affect it's own fate has been limited over the years, and decades of GOP rule has limited their power.

Oh, and did you forget that labor during George Meany was right tilting, supporting the war and Nixon? That started the trend towards limiting labor's power, a self-inflicted wound.

Max, I'm 42 years old. I know talking about Marx not only bores the shit out of people, it marks you as a less than serious person. It isn't anti-intellectualism, but a simple fact that the Beatles recognized nearly 40 years ago. You don't win people over by discussing theory, but by delivering for them.

And what you describe as "leaderless groups" aren't leaderless. They just don't need a Nader to tell them to do what they need to do.

I think people on the left fear leadership from below. They talk a good game of it, but they don't want some housewife telling them what to do. They recoil when they meet the Cindy Sheehans of the world, they sneer at the Michael Moores. They try to hide their elitism and classist views with talk of solidarity.

Max, this isn't a big institution, it's people's lives. When your pet theories fail, people pay for it. The netroots, and that's actually an idea I find slightly overblown, is not about a movement, but people trying to better their own lives without waiting for permission to do so.

Max responds

2007-01-16T10:04:00.000-05:00

A NOTE FOR STEVE GILLIARD

[Steve G. is a prominent Kos alumni blogger. He did the infamous blackface photoshop of Michael Steele, which I thought was totally fine and dandy. I don't follow his site because he evidently does not follow mine -- nobody's perfect -- so my remarks about netroots could not have been directed particularly at him. Below is a response to his response to my response to Matt Stoller's response to the 60s left. -- mbs]

People say I'm arrogant, but what do they know.

Steve, you're a fine blogger and all-around human being, but there is so much you don't know about the pre-Internet left. Your descriptions of SDS and SNCC are ridiculous. They "morphed into terrorists"? Really, do some research. I could as easily say the netroots' leaders have morphed into campaign consultants. That would be almost but not quite as foolish.

You're right that I run the same hazards of generalization as someone discussing the 60s, or any other time. It's easy to cherry-pick exceptions. No doubt the (old) New Left made tons of mistakes, including the sin or arrogance (isn't that what people in Iowa said about Deaniacs in the 2004 caucuses . . . ?).

I know all about the whiteness, class biases, and lack of internal democracy in activist groups. Truth is, you don't find much democracy in any big institution. Mainly this is distraction from the underlying political issues, a distraction that the commercial media and right opposition is fond of fomenting. Like talking about Obama's middle name or his lack of a necktie, instead of his substantive concerns. Even so, the middle class drift in the 70s accomplished a lot in the areas of environmentalism and feminism, among others.

You don't really address my criticism of the netroots. I acknowledge that it has been great at raising money and helping Democrats. And there's nothing wrong with that, but that's a limitation as well as a virtue, particularly from a left perspective. THIS IS NOT THE SAME AS GAINING POLITICAL POWER. Labor provides tons of resources to Democrats, has for years, and its power over policy is nowhere near proportional to its support. You also betray the weakness I note of anti-intellectualism: you think talk of Marx bores people and isn't conducive to organizing meet-ups.

Finally, you have drunk the Kos kool-aid about 'empowerment' and leaderless groups. Don't you realize this is a reprise of the delusions of the early SDS and "participatory democracy"? The only thing missing is the keyboards.

The Internet is a great tool for empowerment, but people have yet to be empowered.

2007-01-16T03:23:00.000-05:00

Martin Luther King,

2007-01-16T03:21:00.000-05:00

Martin Luther King Jr - I have a dream speech - Aug 28 1963

The American Rorhschact test

The good old days my ass

2007-01-16T02:19:00.000-05:00

Power to the people and my handler

MY LEFT FANNY
By Max Sawicky

All generalizations about "the 1960s left" are false, except for this one.

Matt Stoller is well-situated to talk about the intersection of contemporary internet-based protest and the Democratic Party. He does not seem very current on the boots-on-the-ground left that is responsible for the huge anti-war demonstrations we have seen since 2002, as well as for local organizing against Wal-Mart and for the "living wage." About the 60s left, he is all wet. Why does this matter? It speaks to the limits of the netroots when it comes to policy, program, ideology, and intellectual world-view.

The "Internet Left" is a mostly brainless vacuum cleaner of donations for the Democratic Party.

Let's go chronologically. Two preeminent organs of the 1960s left were the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). SNCC had at least two distinct vintages which I would characterize as before and after Stokely. Before was integrationist, social-democratic, and reformist. After was black nationalist and radical.

SDS was never a centralized organization with a unified ideology. The politics of its presidents (and later a collective leadership) changed significantly over the years. At the beginning there were social-democratic and laborist roots. Soon there was a decentralist community organizing focus, alienated from the Democratic Party. Later still there was serious, non-dogmatic interest in Marx (my favorite period, typified by people like Carl Oglesby and Carl Davidson). Later still we had the deranged "Weather-people," multiple Maoist and Trotskyist formations, the Stalinist Enver Hoxha-lovin' Progressive Labor Party, etc. etc.

How in the world could you generalize about this Tower of Babel? Matt tries to, invoking the term "post-scarcity," which applies to hardly any of the worthies above. He suggests that economics was ignored. This is rubbish. Even those most alienated from the U.S. working class did not hold the starving Third World masses to be under the yoke of a post-scarcity economy.

Think of how today's media characterizes "angry bloggers" and the netroots, and consider whether TIME Magazine-type descriptions of SDS or SNCC would have been accurate. In TIME Magazine, then and now, you do not read about class politics. You learn about Stokely Carmichael and Al Sharpton, not about Bill Fletcher or Adolph Reed. You hear about protectionism from the Buchanan right, never from the global justice left.

In TIME Magazineland, the latter 90s and "welfare reform" were triumphs of Clintonomics, not the targets of withering critiques.

The contemporary "Internet left" is not very left. It is vociferous, partisan, and alert to opportunities to nail Republicans and Joe Lieberman. And there's nothing wrong with that. But left? Please.

* The netroots criticized the Iraqi effort a) for not gaining the support of the U.N.; b) for not armoring the troops sufficiently; c) for not proving the existence of WMDs; d) for not proving connections to Al Queda; e) for not using enough troops. Can we presume that if George H.W. Bush had been there to get the support of the U.N. and prove Saddam had WMDs, an invasion would have been justified?

Max,

Let's start with the last first. I remember Kos and I calling the Iraq war a failed colonial adventure in 2002, before it was started. I predicted that someone like Sadr would rise to power and the exiles would be rejected. But I guess generalizations are fine when one is engaged in a romantic retelling of the 1960's. But with Google, you will see I predicted the failure of Iraq from before the invasion.

Now, it's easy to pick on Matt, because this is all history to him, but I'm a little older and I find your comments bordering on Kagan-like misrepresentation.

The "Internet Left" has done more in three years than any of the groups you hail as heroes from the 1960's did in 10 years. Why? Because neither SDS or SNCC were actually interested in democratic politics. They morphed into terrorists. Now, it's all nice to recall the Panthers and their cute black leather jackets, but in the end, they were bait for the FBI because they preached guns and violence. Neither SDS or SNCC lived more than a few years because they had no interest in working with people, only "the people". Their community organizing skills rarely coopted the people who could make them last. They centered on a dynamic leader, not the community.

The New Left failed because it was arrogant. It didn't listen and didn't care about the people they were supposed to work with. They wanted to lead without listening.

You should remind people how the Panthers devolved into drug-dealing gangsters. It was macho theatrics, not real leadership. The SDS, which morphed into the Weathermen, are remembered for their incompetence in bomb making.

Now, if you think being on the left is about Marx and discussions, you have to be kidding. Who was going to listen to that?

The people who suceeded were the ones who left the "movement" and ran for office, or who grew up, like Joseph Lowery.

Then we had the autocratic Nader movement, with one leader, and many followers.

Max, I also find it amusing that you forget to note how the class differences on the left would be enshrined. You keep talking about the "left", but let me let you in on a secret, that left was exclusionary as hell. Public Citizen had rich, white interns who could afford to be paid those miserable salaries, excluding many who could have expanded the movement. From NARAL to the Sierra Club, they all became havens for the rich. I applied for a job at the Audibon Society and got a plea for donations with my rejection letter. Who does that?

You laud these groups, but forget what they did. They shifted the discussion on the left from civil rights to toasters. They embraced the consumer economy and sought to perfect it, while the working class was slowly being screwed.

Then you talk about the anti-war protests. You mean the embarassing ones run by ANSWER, which alienated more people than gained their support.

Meetings? You mean like the Greens had? They were good at talking and bad at doing.

I think what you resent about the "Internet Left" is that they get things done. The Greens can't get past the city council level. Chris Bowers got millions of dollars to win races. Which might actually change people's lives and not end up in a circle jerk discussion.

What I think you are blind to is that you admired the organized, New Left, where people had rules and read books and marched. Instead of the "Internet left" which actually empowers people to participate in politics. You would think that someone on the left would be excited by that, and you would want to encourage it.

The New Left failed. It was only when people embraced political power did changes really happen. The "Internet left" empowers people to act on their own or with others, with no "leader" to direct them. One would think that real people power, not just the crap tossed about in meetings, would be exciting.

A simple question

2007-01-16T01:24:00.000-05:00

What happens if the Iraqi Shia take an attack on Iran as an attack on them?

What bubble?

2007-01-16T00:41:00.000-05:00

Michael Temchine for The New York Times

The Columbia, above, formerly the Columbia
Hospital for Women, is a new complex of condos
in the Foggy Bottom section of Washington. An
owner who bought a two-bedroom unit in 2004
is facing having to sell it at a loss or rent it for less
than his monthly payment.

Buyers Scarce, Many Condos Are for Rent

By VIKAS BAJAJ
Published: January 16, 2007

WASHINGTON — David Franco’s illuminated model of a proposed 10-story condominium tower dominates a sales center that, in spite of the “Now Selling” banner still fluttering outside, is conspicuously closed for business.

“We could have waited it out and kept pushing and pushing,” Mr. Franco said about the decision to abandon plans to sell 180 luxury condominiums with floor-to-ceiling windows offering views of the Washington Monument and Capitol Hill. “But it would have taken significantly longer.”

After six weeks of failing to lure more than a couple of dozen buyers, Mr. Franco and his partner, Jeff Blum, joined the builders of nearly 6,000 condominium units in the Washington metropolitan area who have decided in the last three months to recast their projects as rental apartment buildings.

Since the middle of 2006, the frenzied condominium market here and in several other big cities like Las Vegas, Miami and Boston has collapsed. Once roaring sales have slowed to a trickle, sparse inventory has mushroomed into a glut and soaring prices have flattened out and started falling.

In many cities, banks have significantly scaled back loans to condominium builders. Some have demanded that developers sell half or more of the units in a building before even beginning construction.

In hopes of salvaging something from their costly plans, hundreds of developers like Mr. Franco are looking to the strong market for apartments, planning to rent their units for at least a couple of years while waiting for today’s condo surplus to shrink. Mr. Franco and Mr. Blum hope to break ground on what will be a somewhat less expensive building this spring.

In some cases, developers are even turning older buildings back to rentals after a brief or aborted attempt at condo conversion. Meanwhile, another 2,500 proposed condominiums in the Washington area have been scrapped altogether, according to Delta Associates, a real estate research firm.

The latest salvage operation on the part of condo developers is far from a sure bet, however. Condominium buildings generally cost more to build and operate than those built for apartments from scratch. And while rents are high and rising in most cities, in many cases they still are not sufficient to turn a profit.

Idiocy in action

2007-01-16T00:07:00.000-05:00

Allison V. Smith for The New York Times
Teresa Hernandez taking an order on Friday
at a Pizza Patrón in Dallas.

Pizza Chain Takes Pesos, and Complaints
By GRETEL C. KOVACH
Published: January 15, 2007

DALLAS, Jan. 14 — Jose Ramirez and two friends stopped by a Pizza Patrón here after work on Thursday for a carry-out dinner. Mr. Ramirez, his jeans dusted with white chalk from the construction site, ordered a Hawaiian and La Patrona — a large with the works.

The chain, which has 59 stores in five states, is trying to attract Latinos by using Spanish.

The chain is accepting pesos in a promotion.

The pies cost him almost 220 big ones. Pesos, that is.

Mr. Ramirez, 20, received his change in American coins and said he liked the chain’s new “Pizza por Pesos” promotion. He had been in the United States for 15 days — his home is in Guanajuato, Mexico — and he wanted to spend the last of his Mexican currency.

“I just arrived,” he said in Spanish, smiling nervously. “It’s my first time here.”

The employees at this Pizza Patrón in East Dallas, one of 59 in five Southwestern and Western states, were still puzzling over the conversion rates almost a week after the chain started accepting peso bills on Jan. 8.

But the promotion has already hit a nerve in the nationwide immigration debate. The company’s Dallas headquarters received about 1,000 e-mail messages on Thursday alone. Some were supportive, but many called the idea unpatriotic, with messages like, “If you want to accept the peso, go to Mexico!” There were even a few death threats.

Antonio Swad, president and founder of Pizza Patrón, said he was surprised by the outcry.

“I certainly wasn’t expecting ‘pizza for pesos’ to become a touchstone for the immigration issue,” Mr. Swad said. It was nothing more than an effort to “reinforce our brand promise to be the premier Latino pizza chain,” he said. “We’re businessmen.”

“The Latino population is significant and it’s important,” Mr. Swad continued. “It’s here to stay. The United States is not going to be like it used to be; it’s going to be different, and it has an opportunity to be better.”

Mr. Swad, who is Italian-Lebanese and was born and raised in Columbus, Ohio, did not speak Spanish when he opened his first take-out pizzeria in Dallas in 1986. But he saw a business opportunity in the growing Latino minority in his neighborhood, and the way his customers struggled to order in English.

A year later he changed the name from Pizza Pizza to Pizza Patrón, hired bilingual staff members and added items like La Mexicana, a pizza that includes spicy chorizo sausage and jalapeños.

Pizza Patrón became a franchise in 2003, and same-store sales were up more than 34 percent in the most recent quarter compared with last year, Mr. Swad said.

From 10 to 15 percent of business at his five Dallas pizzerias has been in pesos, he said. Despite the criticism, he said he would continue the promotion until the end of February as planned.

Many Canadian businesses take US dollars for payment. So what is the big deal?

Leave Iran Alone

2007-01-15T14:39:00.000-05:00

He hates Jews, but likes kids

“Leave Us Alone,” Iranian Reformers Say
By Muhammad Sahimi

December 2006 Issue

Back in March, the Bush Administration released its new “National Security Strategy of the United States,” and regime change in Iran leaps out of it as a goal. “We may face no greater challenge from a single country than from Iran,” the document baldly states in a grand exaggeration. And for all the recent talk about Iran’s nuclear threat, the document does not confine its discussion of Iran to the nuclear issue. “The United States has broader concerns,” it says. “The Iranian regime sponsors terrorism, threatens Israel, seeks to thwart Middle East peace, disrupts democracy in Iraq, and denies the aspirations of its people for freedom.”

All of these issues, along with the nuclear one, “can ultimately be resolved only if the Iranian regime makes the strategic decision to change these policies, open up its political system, and afford freedom to its people,” the document states. “This is the ultimate goal of U.S. policy.” President Bush and Condoleezza Rice may stress in public that they are giving diplomacy a try, but this document makes clear that they have something else in mind.

If the Bush Administration attacks Iran, it would be violating the U.N. Charter. And it would also be violating the Algiers Accord that the United States signed with Iran in 1981 to end the hostage crisis. Point I, paragraph 1, of that accord states, “The United States pledges that it is and from now on will be the policy of the United States not to intervene, directly or indirectly, politically or militarily, in Iran’s internal affairs.”

Not only is the goal of regime change illegal, it is also unachievable.

“Democracy cannot be imported, nor can it be given to a people by invading their nation, nor by bombing them with cluster bombs. It must be indigenous,” says Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian human rights advocate who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003.

The Administration has refused to rule out the possibility of military strikes, and even the use of nuclear weapons, on Iran’s nuclear facilities and beyond, as if the Iraq quagmire has not taught it anything. And Iran is not Iraq. Iraq was formed only in 1932 with artificial boundaries that have no historical roots. Iran, on the other hand, has existed for thousands of years as an independent nation. Hence, Iranian nationalism is extremely fierce. Military strikes on Iran would create a potent mixture that combines fierce Iranian nationalism with the Shiites’ long tradition of martyrdom in defense of their homeland and religion. The attacks would engulf the entire region in flames.

“Iranians will not allow a single U.S. soldier to set foot in Iran,” declares Ebadi, and this is a woman who has been imprisoned by Iran’s hardliners and is constantly harassed for her work on behalf of political prisoners.

Armchair warriors, such as William Kristol, have been claiming that intense bombing of Iran will lead to an uprising by Iranians. The absurd argument is that, “We will destroy Iran, but Iranians will love us for bombing them, and hate the hardliners.” Although a large majority of Iranians despise the hardliners, anyone who has the slightest familiarity with Iran’s history knows that intense bombing of Iran will not lead to their downfall. Rather, it will help them consolidate power.

Fixing things

2007-01-15T12:30:00.000-05:00

On the mend

When getting a broken appliance fixed is often more expensive than replacing it, it's not surprising that repair is a dying art. Tim Dowling tries to buck the trend by fixing things himself, and three other Guardian writers try to find someone - anyone - to put their gadgets together again

Monday January 15, 2007
The Guardian

The disposable culture started small. In 1892 William Painter, founder of the Baltimore Bottle Seal Company, patented the crown cork, which would soon become more widely known as the bottle cap. The bottles were returned and refilled, but the bottle caps got thrown away. They only worked once. Painter's chief salesman at the time was King Camp Gillette, who went on to apply the principle to his own invention, the disposable razor blade. Today almost everything has its disposable version - cameras, nappies, barbecues - but the concept has been taken a step further. Economic imperatives have made most of our consumer durables effectively disposable. In short, they are often cheaper to replace than they are to mend. This applies not just to radios and toasters, but to fridges, televisions and dishwashers. We now live in a disposable culture.

We no longer revel in it, however. We know we should be reducing the amount of waste we produce, although for all our efforts to compost or recycle, landfill continues to increase. It's hard to slip a CD player into the bottom of the rubbish these days without feeling a pang of conscience, especially if you suspect that all it needs is a bit of mending. But who fixes that sort of thing any more? And how much would they charge you?

As if we weren't throwing enough away already, modern life has given us dozens of bewildering new appliances - set-top boxes, modem-routers - whose very purpose is almost as mysterious as their workings. To the untrained eye, they appear to be nothing more than plastic boxes that get a bit hot when you plug them in. Every new gadget seems to come with its own remote control or charging station, without which it is inoperable, and which is destined to go missing. In some cases the stuff is literally irreparable; either the spare parts are not supplied or there is nothing to fix - the appliance itself is considered a "complete replacement unit". What do you do, for example, with a broken electric toothbrush? If you're like me, you go out and buy a new one, and then another new one, and then another, until eventually you learn that electric toothbrushes are a sort of con: you're lucky if the base outlives two replacement heads.
..................

Mimi Spencer, Hove
The DVD player
My chunky Toshiba DVD player, bought in 2003, threw in the towel a few weeks back. Needless to say, I didn't have extended warranty cover for my dead appliance. But, still, I took it back to my local branch of Currys to see what could be done. As I carried it in from the car, nursing the plug, lead and remote control unit to my chest, I felt oddly fond of it. We'd had good nights together, that DVD and I.

The Currys boy happened to be immensely tall, with large hands and eyes like a switched-off telly.

"Would it be possible ... ?" I started.

"Can't fix it. Not worth it," he uttered, twiddling something fascinating in his trouser pocket.

"But it's only three years old," I said, as if pleading for the life of a sick puppy. "Surely there must be something ... "

"Customer services," he said, sending me off with a shove of his head.

Adrian at customer services was a bored man, but he did have a gadget on his computer which allowed him to pull up my entire electronic history with the company. The DVD player was uncovered and thus unmendable and wholly uninteresting to Adrian. "It's not on the screen," he sniffed. "There's nothing I can do."

"Have you tried a lens cleaner?" he inquired, rather benevolently, I thought. Yes, I had tried a lens cleaner. "Well," he said, in a conspiratorially low whisper, as if being overheard might be a sackable offence, "you could try the, erm, shop on Sackville Road. Might do it. Depends what's wrong with it. But" - his voice rose perceptibly - "you'd be better off getting a new one. They cost less than 30 quid."

It was tempting. There was something provocative about the slimline DVD players lined up like dancing girls on the shelf. One model cost just £19.99, about the same price as a DVD of The Constant Gardener; this seemed all wrong, like paying more for the coffee than the cup.

"Um, Adrian," I asked gingerly, "could you recycle it if I can't fix it?" The answer was an inevitable no.

Robert Smith Video Repair Centre, dumped on the corner of a residential street in Hove, is one of those places, like Mr Benn's shop, that might not be there next time you look. Inside, the rectangular video recorders and cuboid cathode-ray TVs are stacked in neat ranks, each with a label indicating its medical history. "Dead," said some. Others said, "Done." It was like a geriatric ward for entertainment systems, but there was hope in this room. Here, tinkering with a screwdriver clearly yielded results.

A man with a moustache emerged from a back room and accepted my DVD player, bidding me to await his call with the prognosis. How much would it cost? That would depend, he said, leaving the mystery hanging in the mote-filled air. I left hoping for the best, willing that the fix would cost less than £19.99.

Robert Smith called. The laser was faulty. He had rung a couple of wholesalers, but they didn't have one in stock. "Lasers," admitted Robert, "can be pretty expensive." How expensive exactly? More than £19.99? My heart wanted him to say no, but my brain already knew the DVD was a DNR. "Anything from £20 to £100," replied Robert, like a surgeon breaking the news gently. "You may want to think about writing it off," he continued, getting as close to holding my hand as you can over the phone.

There was nothing for it. The old Toshiba is, alas, off to Guangdong, to be strip-searched for a morsel of metal and dumped in a lake. The slinky new silver DVD player sits under the TV and looks adorable, like a kitten. It's working beautifully. I give it a week.
Jen here.
Yes to everything folks have said so far in the comments. It is disgusting how little one can do to preserve any investment in anything for want of a simple fix. FWIW, I had a $5 part--the wave diffuser--go on a very good mircowave that I have. I was able to slide the old one out with a screwdriver--and put a new one in with said implement. The whole operation took $12 and 5 minutes. Where did I get the part? Take note of this:
Circuit City Part Search
When I first posted up the microwave story, lots of people said I was being cheap for not just getting a new one. WTF? $12 part for a microwave that works great, versus a cheap piece of new shit for $100?
You know what I went and got from the hardware store yesterday? New rubber rings for my Osterizer blender. My ugly almond-color Osterizer blender. Not the avocado one that my Mom got as an engagement gift in 1963, which she still has, but the one that she got as a housewarming gift for the one year that we lived in NJ in 1971. Its motor is stronger than anything commercially available today and it really, really works. Mom replaced the blades (a $15 part) once around 15 years ago before she gave it to me to take to DC when I was in law school. This is what it looks like, sort of (mine's older):
True story: A few years ago a couple I know had a chili potluck party. One of their wedding gifts was a Cuisinart blender--a few years old. They tried to crush ice in it for margaritas and the motor burned out. Luckilly, they had a secondhand Osterizer from her Mom in the storage area. They washed it off, fired it up, and soon it was margaritas for all.
When I went to get the replacement rings, the guy asked me how long I'd had my machine. When I told him, he a) initially asked if I was going to sell it and then b) told me to never sell it. Apparently, those in the know scour yard sales for these.
I've also fixed my old VCR once (I keep it around for my legacy 80's music videos that I taped off of Night Flight and MTV before it started to suck) as well as other old TV shows. When it goes, I may loose access to them unless I get them converted to DVD. Shame, really.

Give me back my airmen

2007-01-15T11:44:00.000-05:00

Airmen as 'light infantry' may hinder AF mission

Commentary by Lt. Col. Gerald Goodfellow
28th Operations Group

1/10/2007 - ELLSWORTH AIR FORCE BASE, S.D. (ACCNS) -- Every couple of weeks I have the pleasure of briefing Ellsworth Air Force Base's newest first-term Airmen. Every time I brief these young Airmen, I make the point that the majority of our day-to-day focus here in the 28th Bomb Wing is to put "Bombs on Target from B-1 Bombers."

However, since Sept. 11 many Ellsworth Airmen have participated in combat operations that do not have anything to do with putting bombs on target from B-1s. In fact, Airmen from across Ellsworth have filled ground force combat gaps and taken part in harrowing firefights and missions in support of ground (mostly Army) forces through "in-lieu-of" taskings. I deeply respect the Airmen from Ellsworth who are, in many cases, heroically supporting our current wars on the ground. It is a fortunate situation that Air Force Airmen can support the joint fight and add to America's security in ways we did not imagine in the past. It is also fortunate for the other services' ground forces that we can "prop up" their capabilities by supporting them through these "in-lieu-of" taskings.

These kinds of taskings are not what most of us expected when we joined the Air Force. However, these are taskings that we are now being given and it is reassuring to me that we, as professional Airmen, will continue to carry them out with the same professionalism and dedication we aspire to when we "put bombs on target" from B-1s. This dedication and professionalism is what makes me feel fortunate to be part of the Ellsworth team and a Service, the U.S. Air Force, which has so selflessly supported these taskings. However, at some point the military community as a whole will need to take a hard look at the "in-lieu-of" taskings concept, and determine if Airmen should continue to perform these kinds of taskings.

I personally hope that all the services are currently striving to organize in a way that will largely prevent Air Force personnel from conducting "in-lieu-of" taskings in the future. This is because I do not believe the Air Force should be in the business of fighting combat operations on the ground. For example, although today it is a necessity, I do not believe in the long-run any Army or Air Force general officer will determine that it is in America's best security interests to continue to have Airmen driving trucks in Army convoys. As Air Force Doctrine Document 1 points out, the role of the Air Force spelled out by law in the National Security Act of 1947 is to "Organize, train, and equip aviation forces for prompt and sustained offensive and defensive air operations. This basic charter has essentially remained unchanged to the present."

America has branches of the service that specialize in ground combat and those services should perform those roles as directed by law just as the Air Force should perform its roles as directed by law. Ground warfare is not a role of the Air Force beyond some very specialized duties all of which are spelled out in Air Force doctrine, which include: force protection of air assets on the ground where they are most vulnerable, special operations to enhance air warfare, civil engineering functions (to include combat engineers), etc.

The last sentence of the current Air Force mission statement boils down very succinctly what I hope we continue to concentrate on in the Air Force: "...to fly and fight in Air, Space, and Cyberspace." I believe our piece of that mission here at Ellsworth is flying and fighting from B-1s, and meeting our additional Air Force responsibilities to man expeditionary Air Force units with expeditionary combat support forces to support the larger overall Air Force mission. Ideally, I believe everybody stationed at Ellsworth from the wing commander to the Airmen in civil engineering, maintenance, flight kitchen, personnel, bomb squadrons, etc., should be stationed at Ellsworth to support our B-1 and expeditionary combat support mission. I do understand that Airmen at Ellsworth will continue to fill "in-lieu-of" taskings for the foreseeable future. However, I also hope we can support these taskings without diminishing B-1 or Air Force capabilities. In fact, anybody who seriously considers combat for a living realizes the Air Force's importance to the joint fight, and would never want to see Air Force capabilities diminished. In a nutshell:

"Who controls the air controls the fight. When all the sterile debates between Soldiers and Airmen are set aside, this hard reality remains. It has been more than fifty years since U.S. forces faced an enemy willing and able to contest control of the airspace over the battlefield. We can't count on that condition to endure automatically. Were it to change, the offensive rapidity demonstrated so vividly in this war would become virtually infeasible. The Army and Marine Corps thus have a vested interest in the continued unchallenged superiority of their Air Force, Navy, and Marine Air partners, and acknowledging that interest needn't and shouldn't be seen as undermining their own strategic importance."

The above statement from the April 24, 2003 Washington Post was written by retired Col. Richard Sinnreich during the first weeks of Operation Iraqi Freedom. What makes the statement so compelling is the fact that Colonel Sinnreich is not an Air Force officer but a former Army officer, who served at the Army's School for Advanced Military Studies, as its director between 1985 and 1987. SAMS is perhaps the Army's premier school for training officers with the abilities to solve complex war related problems.

In America's current wars the Air Force has found itself in a situation where it, in effect, has to pay for and train its Airmen to serve ground duty (a form of "light infantry", to quote Gen. Ronald Keys, Air Combat Command commander) and then pay to supply that light infantry with items from bullet proof vests to armored vehicles to keep them safe. In the future I hope the Air Force can stop doing this because I, like Colonel Sinnreich, believe the Air Force and our nation have a vested interest in retaining the ability to gain and maintain air superiority in our future wars. Further, I believe the Air Force should spend its money on capabilities that will ensure future air dominance. When the Air Force loses manpower or defense money because it has to fill unanticipated gaps in sister service capabilities, the Air Force is put at a disadvantage when it comes to modernizing its own capabilities.

I find myself in a dilemma when it comes to "in-lieu-of" taskings. I'm so very proud when I hear the stories of the firefights and tough ground combat that Ellsworth Airmen are performing as part of their "in-lieu-of" service. However, I also understand that supporting non-Air Force roles for prolonged periods could in the long run prove detrimental to the Air Force and America's overall security. This is why it is so important that we at Ellsworth continue to find ways to work smarter to fulfill our "bombs on target" mission while we continue to support the other kinds of taskings we receive.

Yeah, attacking the Mahdi Army will happen

2007-01-15T03:54:00.000-05:00

Maliki does what I say

U.S. and Iraqis Are Wrangling Over War Plans
By JOHN F. BURNS

This article was reported by John F. Burns, Sabrina Tavernise and Marc Santora, and written by Mr. Burns.

BAGHDAD, Jan. 14 — Just days after President Bush unveiled a new war plan calling for more than 20,000 additional American troops in Iraq, the heart of the effort — a major push to secure the capital — faces some of its fiercest resistance from the very people it depends on for success: Iraqi government officials.

American military officials have spent days huddled in meetings with Iraqi officers in a race to turn blueprints drawn up in Washington into a plan that will work on the ground in Baghdad. With the first American and Iraqi units dedicated to the plan due to be in place within weeks, time is short for setting details of what American officers view as the decisive battle of the war.

But the signs so far have unnerved some Americans working on the plan, who have described a web of problems — ranging from a contested chain of command to how to protect American troops deployed in some of Baghdad’s most dangerous districts — that some fear could hobble the effort before it begins.

First among the American concerns is a Shiite-led government that has been so dogmatic in its attitude that the Americans worry that they will be frustrated in their aim of cracking down equally on Shiite and Sunni extremists, a strategy President Bush has declared central to the plan.

“We are implementing a strategy to embolden a government that is actually part of the problem,” said an American military official in Baghdad involved in talks over the plan. “We are being played like a pawn.”

The American military’s misgivings came as new details emerged of the reconstruction portion of Mr. Bush’s plan, which calls for more than doubling the number of American-led reconstruction teams in Iraq to 22 and quintupling the number of American civilian reconstruction specialists to 500. [Page A7.]

Compounding American doubts about the government’s willingness to go after Shiite extremists has been a behind-the-scenes struggle over the appointment of the Iraqi officer to fill the key post of operational commander for the Baghdad operation. In face of strong American skepticism, the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, has selected an officer from the Shiite heartland of southern Iraq who was virtually unknown to the Americans, and whose hard-edged demands for Iraqi primacy in the effort has deepened American anxieties.

Where is Hillary?

2007-01-15T03:36:00.000-05:00

Is Hillary Clinton going to oppose the war or not?

Writing statements no longer count. There is no middle of the road. Bush is planning a preemptive war against Iran with NO congressional approval. It's either oppose Bush now, or when Iraq is in flames killing Americans .

And by oppose, I mean call for a withdrawal of US troops before Bush gets them killed

So is Hillary going to do the right thing, or triangulate some more?

Be greatful, Iraqis

2007-01-15T03:19:00.000-05:00

A video provided to Reuters by Hamourabi
Human rights group shows bodies being loaded
onto a truck in Haditha in November of 2005.
The U.S. military charged a Marine squad leader
with 13 counts of murder in the killings last year
of unarmed civilians in Haditha, one of the man's
defense lawyers said on Thursday.
(Hammurabi Organisation via Reuters TV/Reuters)

Today's Bush Translation: Why Aren't The Iraqis More Grateful?
by litigatormom

This is from the 60 Minutes interview I missed to watch 24, where people make logical decisions and they blow shit up.

PELLEY: Do you think you owe the Iraqi people an apology for not doing a better job?

BUSH: That we didn't do a better job or they didn't do a better job?

PELLEY: Well, that the United States did not do a better job in providing security after the invasion.

BUSH: Not at all. I am proud of the efforts we did. We liberated that country from a tyrant. I think the Iraqi people owe the American people a huge debt of gratitude, and I believe most Iraqis express that. I mean, the people understand that we've endured great sacrifice to help them. That's the problem here in America. They wonder whether or not there is a gratitude level that's significant enough in Iraq.

PELLEY: Americans wonder whether . . .

BUSH: Yeah, they wonder whether or not the Iraqis are willing to do hard work necessary to get this democratic experience to survive. That's what they want.

Is he out of his mind?

What can I do?

2007-01-15T02:40:00.000-05:00

Howard Alexander

Add worried dad to grim Iraq toll

After watching President Bush address the nation on Wednesday night, Howard Alexander went to bed repeating a question.

"What can I do?" Alexander kept asking.

His was the question of an anguished 53-year-old Brooklyn father whose son was being held nearly a year beyond his enlistment as he serves a second tour in Iraq.

"What can I do? ..."

That tour was itself being extended because the replacement unit had not had adequate stateside time since its own last combat hitch. Bush had now announced he was deploying more troops of an overextended Army.

"What can I do? ..."

He had already written countless letters and made endless calls to politicians and military officials in an effort to get his son home.

"What can I do? ..."

No answer came. Alexander suffered seemingly minor physical distress during the night, but told his wife he was all right and he rolled over. He never woke again.

The autopsy found no evidence of heart trouble or an aneurysm. The best medical guess was his death resulted from a seizure disorder he had periodically experienced.

Such seizures can be triggered and intensified by the biochemical changes that accompany stress. Nobody is saying Bush gave Alexander the condition. The possibility remains that a presidential address preceded by months of high anxiety translated into a blast of seizure-inducing norepinephrine, corticosteroids and other chemicals.

You cannot help but wonder if perhaps this was the first death by speech.

"It wasn't Bush," his sister Diane Mooney charitably allows. "But he didn't help."

Alexander's mother voices the stronger view that what ultimately killed her only son was the stress of having his boy serve two tours in Iraq, topped by watching the commander in chief announce he was dispatching more troops.

"I believe that caused his death," 82-year-old Mary Alexander said Friday night. "I believe in my heart and soul that's what put Howard where he is today. He couldn't take it."

The scourge of the Kagans

2007-01-15T01:37:00.001-05:00

This fat fuck is Frederick
Kagan

Frederick Kagan is an Unqualified Fraud: Read His CV Here

by The Angry Rakkasan

Sun Jan 14, 2007 at 06:29:00 PM PST

Frederick Kagan is the neo-conservative scholar to whom George W. Bush listens. Working for the conservative think tank AEI, Kagan supposedly gives the Bush administration intellectual cover—as he is one of the few academic "experts" who supports the President’s ideas. He can often be found on C-SPAN, sitting on a distinguished-looking panel, articulating his views on the Iraq insurgency. He is admired by neo-conservatives around the world as being highly knowledgeable in this field, and he is said to have the ear of the President.
So what are Kagan’s credentials if he’s such an expert on the Iraq insurgency? Well, as it turns out, he’s actually completely unqualified, to a point that borders on fraud. Let’s take a look at his CV....

If you’re still not sure who Frederick Kagan is, he is the author of the following oft cited articles that directly refute the Iraq Study Group Report:

Choosing Victory: A Plan for Success in Iraq
The Right Type of "Surge": Any Troop Increase Must Be Large and Lasting

Send More Troops to Baghdad and We’ll Have a Fighting Chance

A neo-conservative of the highest order, Kagan is an influential member of the Project for the New American Century.
So the question is, if Kagan is such an expert on military affairs and the Iraq insurgency, where did he get this expertise? But before we address that question, I would like to note that I believe there are two primary means for obtaining information that would qualify one as an "expert." These are: 1.) Substantial personal experience and 2.) Conducting scholarly research. Thus, as an "expert," we could assume Kagan has one or both of these concerning our current foreign policy predicament.
So let’s start from the top, using information that comes from Kagan’s own Curriculum Vitae, as provided by his employer, AEI:

Experience, specifically, relevant military experience:

None. Frederick Kagan has never donned a uniform or led troops in combat.

Okay, that’s no big deal. Lots of people who’ve never served in the military are experts in the field of military strategy. So let’s turn to Kagan’s education.

Education:

Kagan graduated in 1991 from Yale University with a B.A. in Soviet and East European Studies. After graduating, he took on a position as an "unsalaried intern" at the Department of Defense, working for the Assistant Deputy Under-Secretary for Russian, Eurasian, and East European Affairs. He worked on projects concerning the Russian army, Russia’s relations with the other former Soviet republics, and the development of the armies of those republics. Kagan then headed back home to Yale for grad school, which he completed in 1995 by being awarded a Ph.D. in Russian and Soviet Military History.

Okay, so there’s not a lot there. No study of the Middle East and no practical experience in the areas of Arab history or insurgencies. As a student, it is clear that Kagan was focused primarily on the Cold War.
But of course, many scholars eventually specialize in fields they didn’t study in school. They do this through scholarly research after they’ve taken a position as a researcher or instructor at a university. So maybe Kagan did the same after 1995. Let’s take a look at his body of work—his research publications:

Publications

If you haven’t already looked at it, Kagan has a seven-page CV that lists his education and all of his publications. This is fairly common for academics. What makes Kagan’s different, is that virtually all of his work is not peer-reviewed (or, refereed). For those who haven’t suffered through graduate school, this means that his work has little to no academic merit. On Talking Points Memo today, reader PS offers an analysis of Kagan’s CV:

From what I can tell, he has no serious background studying the issues that are at the core of his "surge" plan. So I am completely baffled by the extent to which the media has given him credibility as a "military expert".... His CV reveals no publications in refereed history or political science journals in the last decade. Basically the intellectual architect of the surge is an op-ed/Weekly Standard writer whose only substantive expertise is on Napoleon.

For the most part, PS is correct. However, I’ve gone through Kagan’s CV line-by-line and found some mistakes and some interesting points.
First, Kagan has actually authored four peer-reviewed journal articles since earning his Ph.D., though this is a paltry number for any respectable academic. Three have been published in the last decade, but none have been published in the last nine years. Here they are:

"The Evacuation of Soviet Industry in the Wake of ‘Barbarossa:’ A Key to the Soviet Victory," The Journal of Slavic Military Studies, Volume 8, Number 2, pp. 387-414.

1997. "Army Doctrine and Modern War: Notes toward a New Edition of FM 100-5," in Parameters, Spring 1997.

1998. "Star Wars in Real Life: Political Limitations on Space Warfare," Parameters, Vol. XXVIII, No. 3, Autumn 1998, pp. 112-120.

"Back to the Future: NSC-68 and the Right Course for America Today," The SAIS Review, vol. XIX, no. 1 (Winter-Spring 1999), pp. 55-71.

Of course, these have nothing to do with insurgencies, Iraq, or the Middle East in general. It should also be noted that, though they made it through the peer-review process, Kagan’s articles in Parameters are very poorly researched and cited. See for yourself.
Kagan has also written chapters for several peer-reviewed books including The Military History of Tsarist Russia in which he wrote chapters on the Napoleonic Era and the reign of Nicholas I (2002), The Military History of the Soviet Union in which he wrote chapters on Soviet Operational Art and World War II after Stalingrad (2002), and Reforming the Tsar’s Army, in which he wrote a chapter called "Russian Military Reform in the Age of Napoleon" (2004).
That is the extent of Kagan’s scholarly work. On the other hand, he has published a wealth of non-scholarly magazine articles (mostly for the Weekly Standard) and newspaper opinion pieces.
Kagan is also relatively well known for his recently published book on Napoleon called The End of the Old Order: Napoleon and Europe, 1801-1805. Now, to me, that sounds academic. Right? Da Capo Press publishes it and they probably focus on military history. Right? Wrong. Da Capo is not an academic press and it’s not associated with any scholarly institution. In fact, here are some of Da Capo’s latest titles on their web site:

Some of our recent bestselling highlights, include Sport's Illustrated's #1 football book of all time, H.G. Bissinger's Friday Night Lights, Alex Kershaw's The Bedford Boys: One American Town's Ultimate D-Day Sacrifice, Toby Young's How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, Pier Paul Read's The Templars, Michael Flocker's The Metrosexual Guide to Style and The Hedonism Handbook, and Kind of Blue: The Making of the Mile's Davis Masterpiece.
Da Capo Lifelong Books features a wide array of authors and books on pregnancy, parenting, health, fitness, and relationships, including: Your Pregnancy Week by Week, Dr. Susan Love's Breast Book (called "the Bible for women with breast cancer" by the New York Times), the Take Care of Yourself series, Mari Winsor's Pilates bestsellers, Dr. T. Berry Brazelton's Touchpoints and Touchpoints Three to Six, The Children's Hospital Guide to Your Child's Health and Development, Dr. Stanley Greenspan's The Child with Special Needs, Dr. Mike Riera's popular Field Guide to the American Teenager and Staying Connected to Your Teenager, Bill Bridges's "Transitions" bestsellers, and the entire range of Your Pregnancy guides by Dr. Glade Curtis, and many more.

I invite anyone skeptical of anything I’ve written to check out the links I’ve provided, especially the one to Kagan’s CV. Frederick Kagan is a fraud in that he espouses knowledge on military matters in Iraq that he does not have. He has never served in the military and he has never conducted scholarly research on the Middle East, much less Iraq or Iraqi society. And still, AEI maintains that Kagan

specializes in defense issues and the American military. In particular he studies defense transformation, the defense budget, and defense strategy and warfare.

Yet I would like to see proof. Where? Where has Frederick Kagan ever specialized in defense issues and the American military? I want to see it. Young Americans are dying for it. Where and when did he study defense transformation and strategy? Was it during his "unsalaried internship" in 1992? I want to know.

This is who the President of the United States listens to on Iraq--a student of Russian and Napoleonic history. This is madness. Frederick Kagan is an amateur who should be exposed and run out of Washington on a rail for all the damage he is doing to our nation.

I welcome comments from anyone who may have further information on this subject

Attacking Iran

2007-01-15T01:37:00.000-05:00

Sistani

It's really very simple.

While the Neocons plan to eliminate a phantom threat, Iraq with a single nuke, the Iranians can eliminate an entire army.

Does the WH and CENTCOM really think that Sistani and the Shia clerics will let bombs fall unhindered on Iran?

Have they considered the consequences of Sistani saying that an American attack on Iran is a cause for all Iraqi shia to wage jihad?

While the Mahdi Army lays low, waiting for the US to get stupid and take them on, it seems no one has considered what happend if Bush bombs Iran.

The Iranians have planned this for years. They and their friends will act. But what happens when the Iraqis feel bombing Shia holy sites in Iran is an attack on them?

What's even worse is the pretense that the Iraqis have any loyalty to the US.

Marine murdered for insurance?

2007-01-15T01:19:00.000-05:00

Cynthia Sommer is on trial for
arsenic murder of Todd Sommer.

Did hubby pay with life for her boobs?

BY MICHELLE CARUSO
DAILY NEWS WEST COAST BUREAU CHIEF

SAN DIEGO, Calif. - Cynthia Sommer got a pricey boob job to die for - and, according to prosecutors, her Marine husband did just that.

The 33-year-old widow is charged with poisoning Sgt. Todd Sommer, 23, with arsenic in 2002 so she could snare his $250,000 life insurance payout to finance the implants, shopping sprees and hard-partying lifestyle she craved.

Two months after her husband died, Sommer went under the knife, and she showed off her new bod to friends at the Marine Corps Air Station at Miramar, witnesses say.

And instead of somberly mourning, she threw loud parties that brought military cops to her door and quickly began romancing another Marine, who is now her fiancé, witnesses say.

But as the twice-married mother of four stands trial in San Diego Superior Court this month, she's shielding her surgically enhanced chest from the jury with loose shirts and boxy suit jackets that make her look more like a bank clerk than a Black Widow.

Gone, too, is the bleached-blond hair she had in her 2005 mug shot. Her locks are back to natural brown and tied in a schoolgirlish pony tail.

But no matter how prim she appears, Deputy District Attorney Laura Gunn alleges Sommer is a devious killer who slipped her husband a fatal dose of poison - possibly just hours after she consulted a plastic surgeon about getting her $5,400 boob job.

The broke Marine wife had just $280 in the bank and a $7-an-hour job at a Subway sandwich shop on Feb. 8, 2002, when she visited the plastic surgeon, Gunn told the jury in her opening statement.

WH lies

2007-01-15T01:13:00.000-05:00

The Shi'ite Askariya shrine in Samarra, Iraq on
June 23, 2003. The sacred mosque was destroyed
February 22, 2006. (Mandi Wright/Detroit Free Press/KRT)

Administration leaving out important details on Iraq
By MARK SEIBEL

WASHINGTON - President Bush and his aides, explaining their reasons for sending more American troops to Iraq, are offering an incomplete, oversimplified and possibly untrue version of events there that raises new questions about the accuracy of the administration's statements about Iraq.

President Bush unveiled the new version on Wednesday during his nationally televised speech announcing his new Iraq policy.

"When I addressed you just over a year ago, nearly 12 million Iraqis had cast their ballots for a unified and democratic nation," he said. "We thought that these elections would bring Iraqis together - and that as we trained Iraqi security forces, we could accomplish our mission with fewer American troops.

"But in 2006, the opposite happened. The violence in Iraq - particularly in Baghdad - overwhelmed the political gains Iraqis had made. Al-Qaida terrorists and Sunni insurgents recognized the mortal danger that Iraq's election posed for their cause. And they responded with outrageous acts of murder aimed at innocent Iraqis.

"They blew up one of the holiest shrines in Shia Islam - the Golden Mosque of Samarra - in a calculated effort to provoke Iraq's Shia population to retaliate," Bush said. "Their strategy worked. Radical Shia elements, some supported by Iran, formed death squads. And the result was a vicious cycle of sectarian violence that continues today."

That version of events helps to justify Bush's "new way forward" in Iraq, in which U.S. forces will largely target Sunni insurgents and leave it to Iraq's U.S.-backed Shiite government to - perhaps - disarm its allies in Shiite militias and death squads.

But the president's account understates by at least 15 months when Shiite death squads began targeting Sunni politicians and clerics. It also ignores the role that Iranian-backed Shiite groups had in death squad activities prior to the Samarra bombing.

Blaming the start of sectarian violence in Iraq on the Golden Dome bombing risks policy errors because it underestimates the depth of sectarian hatred in Iraq and overlooks the conflict's root causes. The Bush account also fails to acknowledge that Iranian-backed Iraqi Shiite groups stoked the conflict.

President Bush met at the White House in November with the head of one of those groups: Abdul Aziz al-Hakim of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. SCIRI's Badr Organization militia is widely reported to have infiltrated Iraq's security forces and to be involved in death squad activities.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice recited Bush's history of events on Thursday in fending off angry questioning from Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., about why Rice had offered optimistic testimony about Iraq during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing in October 2005.

"The president has talked repeatedly now about the changed circumstances that we faced after the Samarra bombing of February `06, because that bombing did in fact change the character of the conflict in Iraq," Rice said. "Before that, we were fighting al-Qaida; before that, we were fighting some insurgents, some Saddamists."

She cited the version again in an appearance later that day before the House Foreign Affairs Committee. "This is a direct result of al-Qaida activity," she said, asking House members not to consider Iraq's sectarian violence as evidence that Iraqis cannot live together.

Bush's national security adviser Stephen Hadley used the same version of events in an appearance Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press."

Much like the administration's pre-war claims about Saddam's alleged ties to al-Qaida and purported nuclear weapons program, the claims about the bombing of the Shiite mosque in Samarra ignore inconvenient facts and highlight questionable but politically useful assumptions.

No one disagrees that the February bombing of the Golden Dome shrine was a pivotal moment. In the days following the attack, armed Shiites stormed Sunni mosques and neighborhoods, killing hundreds. Baghdad's Sunni residents responded by arming themselves, and Sunni insurgents set off car bombs in Shiite neighborhoods. By October, the monthly death toll was reaching into the thousands.

U.S. diplomats, reporters and military and intelligence officers began reporting that Shiite death squads were targeting Sunni clerics and former officials of Saddam Hussein's Sunni regime at least 15 months before the Samarra bombing.

Spocko v Disney

2007-01-15T00:57:00.000-05:00

Bloggers Take on Talk Radio Hosts

By NOAM COHEN
Published: January 15, 2007

A San Francisco talk radio station pre-empted three hours of programming on Friday in response to a campaign by bloggers who have recorded extreme comments by several hosts and passed on digital copies to advertisers.

The lead blogger, who uses the name Spocko, said that he and other bloggers had contacted more than 30 advertisers on KSFO-AM to inform them of comments made on the air and to ask them to pull their ads.

The comments were also posted on Spocko’s Web site, spockosbrain.com. In response, ABC Radio Networks, which owns KSFO and which in turn is owned by the Walt Disney Company, sent letters to the site’s service provider, demanding the clips be taken down from its servers. The provider complied, raising the issue of what constitutes fair use of copyrighted material by a critic.

In an unusual cap to a simmering controversy, four talk radio hosts at KSFO-AM themselves played the clips on Friday, which had, in some cases, drawn national attention for language considered racially insensitive, religiously intolerant or containing violent imagery. The broadcast contained the occasional carefully measured apology for language that “could have been put more elegantly,” as one host, Melanie Morgan, described her comment — “We’ve got a bull’s eye painted on her big wide laughing eyes” — about Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic speaker of the House of Representatives, who is from San Francisco. “But Ms. Morgan added that her words were obviously a political metaphor that had to be distorted by critics to appear violent.

Ms. Morgan said that the on-air talent had “been reissued guidelines from the company about violent rhetoric and we’ve reviewed those rules and we don’t believe that we have crossed any single line.” But the hosts were uniformly defiant against the bloggers, who were called “crackpots with keyboards” and accused of using “guerrilla tactics.”

Spocko had recorded and disseminated other clips from the station in an effort to alarm advertisers. In one, Brian Sussman, an evening host on KSFO, described Senator Barack Obama, Democrat of Illinois, as a “halfrican,” because he has one African parent and one white parent. In another, from 2005, he challenged a caller who said he was not a Muslim to prove it by repeating back an insult to Allah. Mr. Sussman apologized for both comments during Friday’s three-hour show.

In an interview, Spocko, who described himself as being in his “late 40s and a communications professional,” said he was appalled by what he heard on KSFO. Among the advertisers Spocko contacted, and who have been reported in The San Francisco Chronicle to have stopped advertising at KSFO were Bank of America, MasterCard and the Michigan Economic Development Corporation. During the Friday show, one of the hosts, Lee Rodgers, read an e-mail message asking if the station had lost any sponsors so the listener could, in turn, boycott the former sponsors. Ms. Morgan said “one advertiser — exactly one” had left the station.

When reached at his office, KSFO-AM’s program director, Ken Berry, said he felt “the three-hour broadcast best spoke for us” and referred other questions to ABC. An ABC spokeswoman had no comment.

Spocko’s campaign became more widely followed when his blog was taken down by his Internet service provider, 1&1 Internet, of Chesterbrook, Pa., after ABC lawyers sent the company a cease and desist letter on Dec. 22.

1&1 says “the decision was made to remove the copyrighted material from our servers until the matter is resolved, whether by the parties involved or the judicial system.”

Spocko has since switched to a different Web hosting company. His lawyer, Matt Zimmerman of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit digital rights group based in San Francisco, says that 1&1 acted too quickly in response to the ABC letter, which he described as saber-rattling rather than a valid notice under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, an updating of copyright laws from 1998.

Hey, it just happened

2007-01-14T20:14:00.000-05:00

Today's NYT: Downplaying A Rape At Harvard
by Adam B [Subscribe]
Sun Jan 14, 2007 at 01:12:46 PM PST
One standard feature of the Sunday Styles section of the New York Times (a/k/a, "Women's Sports") is the "Modern Love" column, in which a contributor tells story of, well, love in the modern age.

Today's column is from Ashley Cross, a student at Columbia, who writes about learning that her boyfriend was accused of rape at Harvard. Which, on its face, is an interesting story, but not when it's told in a way that minimizes the offense. She says he said:

Driving back to camp he was uncharacteristically quiet, and later, in the privacy of my platform tent, he sat on my floor and told me he didn’t feel comfortable with our developing relationship unless I knew something about him.

It sounded so ominous; I couldn’t imagine what dark secrets he possessed. "What?" I asked.

He said it flat out: "I’m on leave from college because a friend accused me of raping her."

I didn’t say anything at first. I was shocked, yes, but not frightened. We hadn’t yet slept together, and his physical advances so far bordered on old-fashioned. I ransacked my memory to recall if I had missed clues to his character or ways I might have misjudged him, but I came up empty....

As I peppered him with questions, he talked me through the fateful night of only a few months before, when he and the girl, who’d been a friend, had mingled at a party and drifted off drunk together before winding up back in her room, where, several hours later, they had sex. She became hysterical, claiming he forced himself on her. He left, bewildered and distraught. That night he wrote her a letter apologizing for upsetting her and left it at her door. He told me the letter was an attempt to salvage the friendship.

"Did you rape her?" I asked.

"We had sex," he said. "But I didn’t mean to hurt her, no."

Cross reads the accuser's statement, notes that her boyfriend had left Harvard voluntarily, and complains on how things proceeded from there:

He knew the university was investigating the allegations and that he might face dismissal. What he didn’t know was that he soon would face consequences much more severe than being forced to leave school. Rather than allow the college administration to handle the situation, his accuser filed criminal charges.

Yes, I mean, God forbid that a victim should treat a crime like a crime, and a criminal as a criminal. She wasn't accusing him of plagiarism; this was rape.

He ends up pleading guilty, accepting a plea bargain that called for him to spend 18 months under house arrest. And most of the article is spent with Cross' sympathy for him, that his life was ruined, and how her friends couldn't understand why she still supported him, and how eventually their relationship crumbled. "His ordeal will always haunt me," Cross writes. "In my mind, he was not seeking to humiliate and subjugate a woman on that night many years ago. I believe he was a boy who endeavored for hours in the dark to express his drunken, fumbling desire in a way that, fair or not, ended up unraveling his life."

Well, boo-friggin'-hoo.

"Fumbling desire"? It takes about two minutes on Google, given the identifying facts she acknowledges in the article (rape + Harvard + letter + plea bargain), to find out what really happened here, facts that Times readers are not given thanks to the first-person nature of the piece. From the Harvard Crimson and the court records it reviewed, here's what D. Drew Douglas, once Harvard Class of 2000, did that night:

In the court records, the prosecutor reads an account of the incident, after which [D. Drew] Douglas is recorded as saying, "I admit to committing the crime."

According to the account, both students had been friends for a year. On April 3, the night of the incident, the woman saw Douglas while on a date with another man.

The victim told The Crimson yesterday that she was "feeling the effects of alcohol" that night.

Court documents state that the three attended a party together. Afterwards, as her date walked her home, Douglas began walking along with the pair.

The other man left her at her dorm, but Douglas" told her he wanted to go home with her," and stayed behind, prosecutors told the court.

"She told him that wasn't going to happen and was attempting to get into her door," the prosecutor told the court. "The defendant was blocking access to the card key [reader] she needed to use."

He followed her into the dorm and up the stairs. "She repeatedly told him that he was not going to come in," the document states. "The defendant kept telling her that it's his choice; she did not have input into that decision."

Outside her room he threw her against the wall, pushed her dress and grabbed her buttocks. He also began kissing her, the prosecutor said.

"[She] told him to leave [and] was struggling to get away from him," the documents said.

She managed to open the door to her suite, but did not shut it in time to prevent Douglas from following her inside.

"Once she was inside, although annoyed that the defendant was still there, because she was a friend of the defendant, [she] wasn't particularly frightened," the prosecutor said. "She told him to leave; she was going to bed."

She lay down fully clothed on the bed and began to doze off. "She next became aware that [Douglas] had removed all of his clothing and had gotten into bed with her," the document reads.

Once in bed with her, he proceeded to sexually assault her, though the court document does not describe any penetration. Some time later, the prosecutor said, Douglas left the bed....

The prosecutor said the woman assaulted by Douglas found a handwritten note under her door the next day apologizing "for pressuring her, forcing her to engage in these activities."

Make no mistake of it; this was rape, and Douglas deserved neither the sympathy of Ms. Cross nor the one-sided account she was allowed to publish in the Times today.

Why the fuck is he making military policy

2007-01-14T03:27:00.000-05:00

You know, I have a couple of hundred military history books.

But, never, in my wildest dreams, would I look a bunch of 19 year olds in the face and say let's go take that building. Because I don't know the first thing about leading men in combat.

Why the fuck is the president listening to this fat motherfucker who wouldn't know how to load an M-4, much less take one apart in the dark. If I had served with Jack Keane, I would call him a disgrace to the Army for allowing the president to listen to this assclown. I mean, I would fly to Washington, have lunch with him and say this shit to his face. No letter, no e-mail, face to fucking face.

He would deserve that much consideration.

Robert Kagan has no business making war. None. He is so shitty at his chosen profession, he isn't even a tenured professor, but an assclown at a think tank.

But the sick part is that people who know better are pushing this bullshit

You know, I respected Harry McMaster, until I realized he was bucking for a star. As a battlefield commander in the 1991 Gulf War, his personal courage was unquestioned. But when I read the self-serving bullshit he was pushing out about Tal Afar, shit his own men didn't believe, shit reporters exposed as bullshit, that he had gotten rid of the terrorists. Hell, the Shia were calling for the Wolf Brigade to kill the Turkomen and Sunnis.

Instead of pushing this shit, he should have retired to oppose this.

But he picked the wrong branch. Back in the day, Armored Cav was the shit, going up the Fulda Gap, it was a good job, but times change. The future of that branch is Strikers and armored cars, not M-1's and Bradleys. So what's a man to do?

He refashions himself as a counterinsurgency expert. Which he accomplished by driving a tank.

Someone at JSOC has had a good laugh over this.

You have this fat piece of shit, Kagan, pushing a plan, supported by people who lost their fucking minds or never had them to begin with.

Petraeus is either an optimist or hid his Courtney Massingale side until late in his career. Even though I was not a fan of the way Charles Swannick led the 82nd in Iraq, he, John Baptiste and Paul Eaton are so morally and ethically above him it's shocking. They had the decency to retire and tell the truth.

Now, a lot of the hype about Petraeus comes from Rick Atkinson, who between his history of the Army in WWII, did go to Iraq. But he's mostly a light infantry guy, with some leg infantry time. But mostly he was 101 and 82nd. He is no SF type. Yet, he was allow to toss out the parts he didn't like.

Again, JSOC had people rolling their eyes.

How the fuck is Ray Odierno in command of anything besides his lawn mower. His command of the 4th ID was a disgrace. You have Buford Blount, who successfully led the 3ID nearly cashiered for asking too many questions during the drive to Baghdad, and you have Odierno, who's battalion commanders sucked, one being a raving lunatic who sought out ambushes, now running the war.

Odierno should have been forced to retire. Period.

When will someone like Wes Clark or Tony Zinni put the cards on the table and say the obvious: why the fuck are you listening to Robert fucking Kagan. They are embarassing the Army and their chosen profession by listening to this fucking moron.

I mean, have they no pride? No respect for their own profession? Robert Kagan sits in a room and makes shit up. He has no experience in war. To take his advice seriously should draw the scorn of their peers.

This is akin to taking a health care analyst and telling him to remove a bullet. Kagan writes books. He has no business making military policy. None, and Odierno and Petraeus should be ashmed as professional military men to take his idiotic fucking advice.

Favorite Egg recipe

2007-01-14T02:55:00.000-05:00

I was laying in bed thinking about Robert Kagan making military policy and was so enraged, I got up. But before I launch into my rant about him, I was thinking about breakfast. My landlord gave me a new stove, the fucker is huge, and I ordered some crossaints from Fresh Direct.

I've been shaking a cold and just didn't want to deal with the local supermarket, or a trip to Fairway.

This is the recipe recommended by Richard Olney and other French food afficionatos.

Making perfect scrambled eggs [thread digression moved from General Topics board]

Btw, the way I learned the technique was James Peterson's "Glorious French Food" -- for that one recipe I was eternally grateful.

A short-hand approach would run something like:

Beat some very fresh, high-quality eggs loosely with a fork. Slide them into the top part of a double boiler (or a pan atop a pot) which is set above -- but not touching -- an inch or two of barely simmering water. Begin whisking immediately, breaking up the lumps that form. When the eggs have developed a thick, cottage-cheese-like texture, add slivers of cold unsalted butter (a few tablespoons is not unreasonable; the point is to slow the cooking down and capture bits of butter in the egg emulsion -- slow and steady wins the race), continue mixing until the eggs are about 80-90% cooked, remove from stove and continue mixing to nearly finish cooking them off the heat, and serve over hot buttered or dry toast (I prefer dry), garnished with good salt and garnishes of your choice. Make sure the plate is not cold (but hot would not been good either). If you find the cooking going too fast, you can also use some cold heavy cream to slow things down. Takes 20-30 minutes

But who actually fixes eggs like this? I don't own a copper pot, like Olney. What I tend to do is use butter and a little cheese to get that soft texture.

However, it's time to share your egg recipes. Omlettes, soft boiled eggs, whatever

Mercenary murder in Iraq?

2007-01-14T02:19:00.000-05:00

As pressure grows in Congress to hold private military companies such as Blackwater USA more accountable for their conduct, reports have surfaced of a Dec. 24 shooting in Baghdad that could serve as a textbook case.

According to the State Department, a civilian U.S. contractor shot and killed an Iraqi security officer. Lou Fintor, a spokesman at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, would not say which company the shooter worked for. Two independent sources have told The Virginian-Pilot that he worked for Blackwater, based in Moyock, N.C.

When asked about the reports, Anne Tyrrell, a Blackwater spokeswoman, said Wednesday: "No comment."

Blackwater provides security for U.S. diplomatic staff in Iraq under a multimillion-dollar State Department contract.

Details of the shooting are sketchy. Fintor said there are conflicting reports. "We continue looking into the incident in an effort to try to determine the facts," he said.

He declined to provide any further details about the American contractor, citing the U.S. Privacy Act. However, a former Blackwater contractor and an executive of another private military company, citing sources inside Iraq, independently said that the shooter was a Blackwater contractor.

So far, there is no word of any criminal charges being brought in the case.

Nearly four years after the U.S. invasion, tens of thousands of civilian contractors are working in Iraq. So far, none has been charged with any criminal wrongdoing. One reason: Contractors operate in a legal gray area, in which it's uncertain whether they're subject to civilian law, military law or neither.

The latest effort to clear that up came Wednesday when U.S. Rep. David Price, D-N.C., introduced legislation he says will bring about transparency, accountability and coordination for private contractors operating in a war zone.

"The lack of a legal framework for battlefield contracting has allowed certain rogue contractor employees to perpetrate heinous criminal acts without the threat of prosecution," Price said.

I told you this would happen

2007-01-14T00:46:00.000-05:00

Turk PM asserts right to intervene in Iraq, raps US
12 Jan 2007 17:57:24 GMT

ANKARA, Jan 12 (Reuters) - Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan on Friday reaffirmed Turkey's right to send troops into Iraq to crush Kurdish rebels there and chided U.S. officials for questioning it.

"The Turkish Republic will do whatever is necessary to combat the terrorists when the time comes, but it will not announce its plans in advance," Erdogan told a news conference after a meeting of his ruling AK Party.

"We say we are ready to take concrete steps with the Iraqi government and we also say these steps must be taken now."

In sharp language underscoring Turkish anxiety about the chaos in Iraq, Erdogan said it was wrong for Washington -- "our supposed strategic ally" -- to tell Turkey, with its historic and cultural ties in the region, to stay out of Iraq.

"We have a 350 km border with Iraq. We have historic relations ... the United States is 10,000 km away from Iraq, and yet is it not intervening in Iraq's internal affairs?" he said.

Turkish media say Erdogan has been irked by comments attributed to Washington's envoy to Baghdad, Zalmay Khalilzad, warning third countries not to interfere in Iraqi affairs.

Ankara has long complained that the United States and Iraqi government have failed to crack down on Kurdish rebels, and periodically asserts its right under international law to conduct cross-border operations against the guerrillas.

The Mayalan Emergency

2007-01-14T00:34:00.000-05:00

Guerrilla War

Despite the usage of the term "emergency" it was in actuality a full-scale guerrilla war between the MNLA and British, Commonwealth, and Malayan armed forces; some have gone as far as to characterise it as a civil war. The rubber plantations and tin mining industries had pushed for the use of the term "emergency" since their losses would not have been covered by Lloyds insurers if it had been termed a "war". The MNLA commonly employed hit and run guerrilla tactics, sabotaging installations, attacking rubber plantations and destroying transportation and infrastructure.[1]

Support for the MRLA was mainly based on around 500,000 ethnic Chinese then living in Malaya (there were 3.12 million Chinese in total); the ethnic Malay population for the most part did not support them. The MNLA raised the support of the Chinese because they were denied the equal right to vote in elections, had no land rights to speak of, and were usually very poor. The MNLA's agents within the Chinese community were known as "Min Yuen."

The MNLA had its hideouts in the rather inaccessible tropical jungle with limited infrastructure. Most MNLA guerrillas were ethnic Chinese, though there were some Malays, Indonesians and Indians among its members. They were organized into communist political regiments with political sections, commissars, instructors and secret service. They also had lectures about Marxism-Leninism, and had political newsletters to be distributed to the locals. MNLA also stipulated that their soldiers had to get official permission for any romantic involvement with local women.

In the international scene, the emerging Korean War eclipsed the developing conflict in Malaya. Part of the British attempt at resolving the situation was the implementation of the so-called "Briggs' Plan" which meant the resettlement of people — especially 400,000 Chinese — living in jungle areas to the relative safety of new, partially fortified villages with full round-the-clock armed sentries. People resented this at first but some soon became content with the better living standards in the villages. They were given money and ownership of the land they lived on. Removing a population which might be sympathetic to guerrillas was a counter-insurgency technique which the British had used before, notably against the Boer Commandos in the Second Boer War (1899–1902).

At the start of the Emergency, the British had a total of 13 infantry battalions, comprising seven partly-formed Gurkha battalions, three British battalions, two battalions of the Royal Malay Regiment and a British Royal Artillery Regiment being utilised as infantry[2]. This force was too small to effectively meet the threat of the "Communist Terrorists" or "Bandits", and more infantry battalions were needed in Malaya.

The British brought in soldiers from units like the Worcestershire Regiment, Royal Marines and King's African Rifles. Another effort was a re-formation of the Special Air Service as a specialised reconnaissance, raiding and counter-insurgency unit in 1950. The Permanent Secretary of Defence for Malaya, Sir Robert Thompson, had served in the Chindits in Burma during World War II, which meant that his vast experience in jungle warfare may have proved valuable during this period.

In 1951, some British army units began a "hearts and minds campaign" by giving medical and food aid to Malays and indigenous Sakai tribes. At the same time, they put pressure on MNLA by patrolling the jungle. Units such as the SAS, the Royal Marines and Gurkha Brigade drove MNLA guerrillas deeper into the jungle and denied them resources. The MRLA had to extort food from the Sakai and earned their enmity. Many of the captured guerrillas changed sides. In comparison, the MRLA never released any Britons alive.

In the end the conflict involved up to a maximum of 40,000 British and Commonwealth troops against a peak of about 7–8,000 communist guerrillas.

On October 7, 1951, the MNLA ambushed and killed the British High Commissioner, Sir Henry Gurney. The killing has been described as a major factor in causing the Malayan psyche to roundly reject the MRLA campaign, and also as leading to widespread fear due to the perception that "if even the High Commissioner was no longer safe, there was little hope of protection and safety for the man-in-the-street in Malaya."[3] More recently, MNLA leader Chin Peng has, by contrast, said that the killing had little effect, and that the communists anyway radically altered their strategy that month in their 'October Resolutions'. These responded to the Briggs Plan by reducing unit sizes, increasing jungle farming, and attempting to boost political work.

Gurney's successor, Lieutenant General Gerald Templer was instructed by the British government to push for immediate measures to give ethnic Chinese residents the right to vote. He also pursued the Briggs's Plan, and sped up the formation of a Malayan army. At the same time he made it clear that the emergency itself was the main impediment to accelerating decolonisation. He also instituted financial rewards for detecting guerrillas by any civilians and expanded the intelligence network (Special Branch).

Australia was willing to send troops to help a SEATO ally and the first Australian ground forces, the 2nd Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment (2RAR), arrived in 1955.[4] The battalion would later be replaced by 3RAR, which would in turn be replaced by 1RAR.

Realising that his conflict has not come to any fruition, Chin Peng sought a referendum with the ruling British government alongside many Malayan officials at Baling in 1955. The meeting was clearly intended to pursue a mutual end to the conflict but led by Tunku Abdul Rahman, representing the Malayan government at the Baling Talks, all of Chin Peng's demands were dismissed. As a result, the conflict would appear to have been heightened and in response, New Zealand sent NZSAS soldiers, No. 14 Squadron RNZAF and later No. 75 Squadron RNZAF, and other Commonwealth members also sent troops to aid the British.

With the independence of Malaya under Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman on August 31, 1957, the insurrection lost its rationale as a war of colonial liberation. The last serious resistance from MRLA guerrillas ended with a surrender in the Telok Anson marsh area in 1958. The remaining MRLA forces fled to the Thai border and further east.

On July 31, 1960, the Malayan government declared the Emergency was over, and Chin Peng left south Thailand for Beijing where he was accommodated by the Chinese authorities in the International Liaison Bureau, where many other Southeast Asian Communist Party leaders were housed.

During the conflict security forces killed 6,710 MRLA guerrillas and captured 1,287. Of the total number of guerrillas, 2,702 surrendered during the conflict and about 500 at the end of the conflict. There were 1,346 Malayan troops and 519 British military personnel killed. 2,478 civilians were killed and 810 recorded missing as a result of the conflict.

[edit] Comparisons

Although the conflicts in Malaya and Vietnam differed on many points in so far as the details of their wars, it has been asked time and again by historians as to how a British force of 35,000 succeeded where over a half million soldiers of the U.S. and others failed. One of the main points that differentiated the two was that the MRLA never had a dependable ally close at hand like the Viet Cong did with the North Vietnamese Army.

Another key point was the effectiveness of the Malayan Police Special Branch against the political arm of the guerilla movement[5][6].

The MNLA was also, as mentioned above, a political movement almost entirely limited to ethnic Chinese; support among Muslim Malayans and smaller tribes was scattered if existent at all. The British war effort never suffered from anything approaching the criticism that hammered the U.S. in Vietnam, and the USSR and China were too involved in Korea to give serious aid to the MNLA. Also, many Malayans had fought side by side with the British against the Japanese occupation in World War II, including Chin Peng. This is in contrast to Indochina (Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia) where French colonial officials often operated as proxies and collaborators to the Japanese. This factor of trust between the locals and the colonials was what gave the British an advantage over the French and later, the Americans in Vietnam; Commonwealth troops saw ordinary civilians as allies, not enemies.

Black life means nothing to Lieberman

2007-01-14T00:30:00.000-05:00

Pride Trumps All

By Jane Hamsher @ 1:14 pm

As C&L says, people need to speak out about this:

Sen. Joe Lieberman, the only Democrat to endorse President Bush’s new plan for Iraq, has quietly backed away from his pre-election demands that the White House turn over potentially embarrassing documents relating to its handling of the Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans. Senator Joe Lieberman has just taken the very surprising step of revealing to Newsweek that he will not use his chairmanship on the Homeland Security committee to aggressively probe the government's catastrophic failings in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

There's no excuse for this other than to spit in the face of Democrats who Joe doesn't feel supported him in his moment of need, because after all that is what is most important in the situation. How does his good friend Mary Landrieu, who showed up in CT to campaign for him, feel?

Digby calls him "a vindictive old prick." I think that puts it mildly.

When black people die, Joe Lierberman simply does not care.

People need to put it to him like this directly?

Sen. Lieberman, are you a racist? Do dead black people simply mean nothing to you?

Weird weather cures

2007-01-14T00:27:00.000-05:00

Pull Up A Chair

By: looseheadprop

Long ago when I was in law school there used to be a place on 57th Street and 3rd Avenue in NYC called Tommy Makem’s Irish Pavilion. Remember the traditional Irish music of Tommy Makem and the Clancy Brothers? That Tommy Makem.

My aunts and my mother’s cousins and my cousins used to make such a regular habit of being there on Thursday nights (there was live music Thursday through Sunday and Thursday was the least crowded) that there was a table permanently reserved for our family each Thursday.

Depending on the route I took home, I might get off the subway at Lexington Ave. and walk over to 3rd to catch an express bus home and that would take me right past the Irish Pavilion. As you can imagine, I would often stop in of a Thursday to have a pint and say Hi to the fams.

During my second year of law school I developed pneumonia but tried to keep on at school. I had been invited onto a law review and the workload from that in addition to my course work was crushing. I did not want to fall behind.

One night, I was walking past the Irish Pavilion, too exhausted I thought to make it to 3rd Avenue and wondering if I had the strength to get home when I realized – it was Thursday! I went to the door of the Irish Pavilion, there was line out onto the pavement. But I shoved by a bit and caught the eye of Declan the matre’d . He took one look at me, all flushed and glassy eyed with fever, and pulled me in saying, “I’ll get Tommy.”

I went back to the family table and, thank heavens, there along with a mess of cousins and second cousins was my Aunt Vera. I was saved. A minute later, Tommy came out of the kitchen with a steaming mug, said “you must do as you Uncle Tommy tells you now”, and ordered me to drink its contents. Although Tommy was not really my uncle, he said it would save my life, so I sipped it down.

I am still alive, so I guess he was right. The hot toddy recipe is one I have come back to for more colds, flus and bronchitis than you can shake a stick at. It never fails.

In an Irish Coffee mug or similar container, put:

1 tablespoon of honey

1/6 of a lemon (no more, not less)

1 clove (stuck in the rind of the lemon. Avoid the temptation to add more cloves)

1 shot of Jameson’s Irish Whiskey (Bushmill’s doesn’t work as well, I cannot figure out why)

fill to the top with boiling water.

Breathe the vapors until it is cool enough to sip. Then, sip and breathe until finished. You will feel so comforted and have the most restorative night’s sleep. I have also used it prophylacticly to avoid illness when I have been soaked with icy mud during the odd early spring rugby match. There is nothing like the combination of hot bath and Tommy’s toddy to ward off the effects of the cold .

So, now that it is colds and flu season and with the weird weather we have been having, maybe we should expect more, we may need lots more home remedies. What traditional remedies have you used in your family? For that matter, does anybody else have a great hot toddy recipe? How about a favorite cold weather meal recipe? Something for after the snow shoveling, or better still, something for those nights when you have to commute home in freezing rain?

Are you kidding?

2007-01-13T18:56:00.000-05:00

Didn't we try this?

'Gated communities' planned for Baghdad
New U.S. strategy calls for creating zones of safety in the Iraqi capital, then working outward.
By Julian E. Barnes, Times Staff Writer
January 11, 2007

WASHINGTON — The military's new strategy for Iraq envisions creating "gated communities" in Baghdad — sealing off discrete areas and forcibly removing insurgents, then stationing American units in the neighborhood to keep the peace and working to create jobs for residents.

The U.S. so far has found it impossible to secure the sprawling city. But by focusing an increased number of troops in selected neighborhoods, the military hopes it can create islands of security segregated from the chaos beyond.

The gated communities plan has been tried — with mixed success — in other wars. In Vietnam, the enclaves were called "strategic hamlets" and were a spectacular failure. But counterinsurgency experts say such zones can work if, after the barriers are established, the military follows up with neighborhood sweeps designed to flush out insurgents and militia fighters.

The strategy, described in broad terms by current and former Defense Department officials, is an attempt to re-create the success military units have had in smaller Iraqi cities, most notably Tall Afar.

For the last two years, the military has been focused primarily on training Iraqi security forces. But under the new plan, the primary mission of American combat forces in Baghdad will be to protect Iraqis living in the city.

"In counterinsurgency, by now we have all figured out, the population is the prize," said a Defense official who, like others, spoke on condition of anonymity because details of the program are not final.

Critics of the troop increase President Bush announced Wednesday have said the sheer size of Baghdad, with nearly 6 million people, makes it impossible to replicate the Tall Afar strategy. But counterinsurgency experts say the gated communities concept — a name taken from the walled-off suburban developments in America — is a way to concentrate troops on smaller sections of the capital.

"You do it neighborhood by neighborhood," said the Defense official. "Think of L.A. Let's say we take West Hollywood and gate it off. Or Anaheim. Or central Los Angeles. You control that area first and work out from there."

A Baghdad neighborhood could be sealed off by using a highway or a river as a barrier, or by creating roadblocks and checkpoints between neighborhoods, counterinsurgency experts said.

This is amazing.

They keep citing the British in Malaya, but the chinese were a minority and the MRLA had little support outside their own community.

Also, the British had many more soldiers than the MRLA. Even then the war took 12 years.

You have to be kidding

2007-01-13T08:55:00.000-05:00

Federal Way schools restrict Gore film
'Inconvenient Truth' called too controversial

By ROBERT McCLURE AND LISA STIFFLER
P-I REPORTERS

NOTE: This story has been altered since it was originally published. The computer program Al Gore uses to present scientists’ findings in the movie “An Inconvenient Truth” is Keynote. A competing software program’s name was mentioned in the earlier version of the story.

This week in Federal Way schools, it got a lot more inconvenient to show one of the top-grossing documentaries in U.S. history, the global-warming alert "An Inconvenient Truth."

After a parent who supports the teaching of creationism and opposes sex education complained about the film, the Federal Way School Board on Tuesday placed what it labeled a moratorium on showing the film. The movie consists largely of a computer presentation by former Vice President Al Gore recounting scientists' findings.

Al Gore's documentary about global warming may not be shown unless the teacher also presents an "opposing view."

"Condoms don't belong in school, and neither does Al Gore. He's not a schoolteacher," said Frosty Hardison, a parent of seven who also said that he believes the Earth is 14,000 years old. "The information that's being presented is a very cockeyed view of what the truth is. ... The Bible says that in the end times everything will burn up, but that perspective isn't in the DVD."

Hardison's e-mail to the School Board prompted board member David Larson to propose the moratorium Tuesday night.

"Somebody could say you're killing free speech, and my retort to them would be we're encouraging free speech," said Larson, a lawyer. "The beauty of our society is we allow debate."

School Board members adopted a three-point policy that says teachers who want to show the movie must ensure that a "credible, legitimate opposing view will be presented," that they must get the OK of the principal and the superintendent, and that any teachers who have shown the film must now present an "opposing view."

The requirement to represent another side follows district policy to represent both sides of a controversial issue, board President Ed Barney said.

"What is purported in this movie is, 'This is what is happening. Period. That is fact,' " Barney said.

Students should hear the perspective of global-warming skeptics and then make up their minds, he said. After they do, "if they think driving around in cars is going to kill us all, that's fine, that's their choice.

Are you fucking kidding me? ONE e-mail from a lunatic can stop this film from being shown? The school board should be ashamed of itself and the parents should be raising holy hell.

14,000 years old? Mouth breathing idiot shouldn't be allowed out in public

He has affliliations

2007-01-13T08:42:00.000-05:00

Well, he's my choice, and that's really the
point, isn't it,

Iraqi leader goes own way to fill top post
He picks an unknown to lead forces in Baghdad, which raises questions about his motives.
By Louise Roug and Peter Spiegel, Times Staff Writers
January 13, 2007

BAGHDAD — Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki has filled the top military job in Baghdad with a virtually unknown officer chosen over the objections of U.S. and Iraqi military commanders, officials from both governments said.

Iraqi political figures said Friday that Maliki also had failed to consult the leaders of other political factions before announcing the appointment of Lt. Gen. Abud Qanbar.

The appointment is highly significant because it is Maliki's first public move after President Bush's announcement that he was sending more troops to Iraq. The prime mission of those troops is to reduce violence in Baghdad, much of which is blamed on sectarian fighters.

As the Iraqi commander for the capital, Qanbar would play a central role in that campaign, and any ties he might have to sectarian groups could undermine the new U.S. effort.

In his speech Wednesday, in which he announced the troop increase, Bush said political and sectarian interference in security matters would no longer be tolerated.

"If the Iraqi government does not follow through on its promises, it will lose the support of the American people," Bush said. "The prime minister understands this."

Maliki's decision to push through his own choice for one of the country's most sensitive military posts — and to reject another officer who was considered more qualified by the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. George W. Casey — has renewed questions about the prime minister's intentions.

"It's a delicate situation," said Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish lawmaker who questioned the choice of Qanbar. "It's very dangerous if it turns out that he has affiliations," he said, naming Maliki's political party and the anti-American Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada Sadr.

U.S. officials are skeptical of Qanbar not only because of the way he was named, but because they know little about him. Moreover, they have questioned the degree to which Maliki's government is reliant on sectarian figures, particularly Sadr. Maliki essentially is asking American officials to take Qanbar on trust at a time when they have little left.

Qanbar, a commander in the navy during Saddam Hussein's reign, has not worked with American military officials, who say they know little about him other than that he hails from Amarah, a city in Iraq's Shiite-dominated south, and that he was taken prisoner by American forces near Kuwait during the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

U.S. commanders have said that officials in Maliki's government have intervened several times to block them from combating Sadr's Al Mahdi militia, which is accused of being behind much of the bloodshed in Baghdad. When U.S. forces did raid the militia's stronghold of Sadr City, a largely Shiite neighborhood of east Baghdad, Maliki's government publicly criticized them. On several occasions, Maliki ordered the release of suspected militiamen captured there, frustrating U.S. commanders.

You bet your life

2007-01-13T01:18:00.000-05:00

I wonder if there is any crossover?

Battling With Sadr for Iraqi Soldiers' Hearts

By Nancy Trejos
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, January 13, 2007; Page A01

BAGHDAD -- The Iraqi soldiers broke into chants to commemorate the 86th anniversary of the creation of their army.

"Muhammad, Haider, Fatima, Hasan and Husayn!" shouted a group of dancing soldiers, bellowing the names of the prophet and other long-dead Islamic icons revered by Shiite Muslims.

U.S. troops with the team training the Iraqi army's 2nd Brigade, 6th Division patrol a Baghdad neighborhood. Most of the Iraqis they work with are Shiites.

Saddam Hussein was hanged Dec. 30, 2006, after an Iraqi tribunal found him guilty of crimes against humanity. Get background, photos and video about Hussein's rise to power and ultimate fall.

A second later, the name of a living Shiite figure came out of the din. "Moqtada! Moqtada!" one soldier exclaimed, invoking the name of Moqtada al-Sadr, the radical Shiite cleric and leader of the Mahdi Army militia that American officials blame for many of the worst acts of violence in Baghdad.

Standing quietly in the crowd were four U.S. Army officers, there to represent the team of American soldiers advising the Iraqis. "Sounds like the Mahdi militia is in the tent," said their interpreter, Mohammed Noshi.

Moments before the chanting began, at a rally last Saturday morning at the soldiers' shared base in eastern Baghdad, a brigade commander in the Iraqi army's 6th Division had called the troops the "hope of this country."

"Some people are trying to create sectarian violence to divide this country," said the colonel, who asked that his name not be published out of fear for his life. "It is our job to keep this country in one piece."

At best, said several U.S. soldiers interviewed at the base this month, some of the Iraqi troops they advise are sympathetic to Sadr and his army. At worst, they said, some are members of the militia, also known as Jaish al-Mahdi. Despite the uneasiness of the alliance, 100 U.S. troops and 500 Iraqi soldiers have conducted joint raids and shared a base on the eastern side of the Tigris River, once a mixed area that is becoming predominantly Shiite.

Training Iraq's police and army to the point where they can operate on their own is key to any reduction of U.S. forces, American commanders have said. Five thousand U.S. troops are already embedded with Iraqi units as advisers.

U.S. military officers say that the Iraqi police force is deeply infiltrated by militiamen and predict that the army will be quicker to operate independently. But a four-day visit to the base known as Old MOD, for the former Ministry of Defense complex, showed that the army is not immune to the militias' influence. According to the Americans, most of the Iraqi soldiers are Shiites, and some come from Sadr City, a sprawling Baghdad slum that is a Mahdi Army stronghold. Some carry pictures of Sadr.

"Does it mean that they're Jaish al-Mahdi? No," said Lt. Col. Edward Taylor, head of the U.S. military transition team, which is attached to the 2nd Infantry Division's 2nd Brigade, based at Fort Carson, Colo.

If he is wrong, his soldiers will die.

Nothing like Vietnam

2007-01-13T01:07:00.000-05:00

The jihad now is against the Shias, not the Americans'

As 20,000 more US troops head for Iraq, Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, the only correspondent reporting regularly from behind the country's sectarian battle lines, reveals how the Sunni insurgency has changed

Saturday January 13, 2007
The Guardian

An Iraqi man who was stopped by US troops while driving a car loaded with weapons in Ramadi, a Sunni-dominated area, is questioned by soldiers
An Iraqi man who was stopped by US troops while driving a car loaded with weapons in Ramadi, a Sunni-dominated area, is questioned by soldiers. Photograph: Chris Hondros/Getty Images

One morning a few weeks ago I sat in a car talking to Rami, a thick-necked former Republican Guard commando who now procures arms for his fellow Sunni insurgents.

Rami was explaining how the insurgency had changed since the first heady days after the US invasion. "I used to attack the Americans when that was the jihad. Now there is no jihad. Go around and see in Adhamiya [the notorious Sunni insurgent area] - all the commanders are sitting sipping coffee; it's only the young kids that are fighting now, and they are not fighting Americans any more, they are just killing Shia. There are kids carrying two guns each and they roam the streets looking for their prey. They will kill for anything, for a gun, for a car and all can be dressed up as jihad."

Rami was no longer involved in fighting, he said, but made a tidy profit selling weapons and ammunition to men in his north Baghdad neighbourhood. Until the last few months, the insurgency got by with weapons and ammunition looted from former Iraqi army depots. But now that Sunnis were besieged in their neighbourhoods and fighting daily clashes with the better-equipped Shia ministry of interior forces, they needed new sources of weapons and money.

He told me that one of his main suppliers had been an interpreter working for the US army in Baghdad. "He had a deal with an American officer. We bought brand new AKs and ammunition from them." He claimed the American officer, whom he had never met but he believed was a captain serving at Baghdad airport, had even helped to divert a truckload of weapons as soon as it was driven over the border from Jordan.

These days Rami gets most of his supplies from the new American-equipped Iraqi army. "We buy ammunition from officers in charge of warehouses, a small box of AK-47 bullets is $450 (£230). If the guy sells a thousand boxes he can become rich and leave the country." But as the security situation deteriorates, Rami finds it increasingly difficult to travel across Baghdad. "Now I have to pay a Shia taxi driver to bring the ammo to me. He gets $50 for each shipment."

Beckham in America

2007-01-12T17:43:00.000-05:00

David Beckham

A Soccer Star Heeds Lure of Hollywood
By LYNN ZINSER and SARAH LYALL

David Beckham has never been simply a sports star. He is a brand, and one who briefly lived at the spot where fashion, celebrity and soccer met. The soccer component of that equation has eroded, but his star power still reverberates worldwide, so much that Major League Soccer has lured Beckham to Los Angeles.

Beckham will make the move from Real Madrid, the most glamorous team in Europe, and the United States’ top professional soccer league will try to cash in on his celebrity appeal — and perhaps that of his wife, Victoria, the former Posh Spice of the Spice Girls pop group.

The Los Angeles Galaxy announced the move yesterday, saying that Beckham would make $250 million over the five years of his deal, including endorsement income; the team did not release his actual salary from the club. Beckham will join the Galaxy after his contract with Real Madrid expires on June 30, coming to a league that has struggled for 11 years to gain prominence on the American sports landscape.

For Beckham, whose time as a world-class midfielder has passed, the move may be a savvy exit strategy from the intense European soccer spotlight. The British news media, ever eager to pounce on weakness, have been particularly savage about Posh and Becks, as they are called in Britain, since his meager performance as England’s captain in the World Cup last summer.

Although at 31 he is a step or more behind the world’s elite players, he still has a deft right foot that serves him especially well on free kicks and crosses. That, coupled with his celebrity, may be enough to capture the attention of sports fans in the United States — even if some of them know his name only from “Bend It Like Beckham,” a 2002 film whose title played on his pop-icon status.

“We want people around the water cooler talking about M.L.S.,” Don Garber, the league’s commissioner, said. “But David Beckham is not going to bring soccer to the next level in this country. It’s going to take a lot of things, but I hope his arrival will be an important step.”

The move had been long rumored. Beckham and his wife opened a soccer academy in 2005 at the Home Depot Center in Carson, Calif., which is also the Galaxy’s home stadium. The M.L.S. board of governors voted in November to relax salary restrictions and allow each team to sign one player for any amount. The rule became widely known as the Beckham Rule.

“David Beckham wouldn’t make that kind of money in Europe,” Bill Girdner, 56, a soccer fan, said yesterday at Lucky Baldwin’s English Pub in Pasadena, Calif.

“The other thing is jerseys is the way teams make a lot of money these days,” he said of the potential marketing windfall Beckham brings.

Beckham emerged as an international sports star in the 1990s during his tenure with Manchester United of England’s Premier League. As long as he kicked the ball into the net with that golden right foot, his fans could forgive his excesses: the outfits that ranged from sarongs to leather suits to store-ripped designer jeans and shirts open to the waist; the smirking ads for razorblades, sunglasses and perfume; the sulking and occasional histrionics; the fancy parties and A-list friends.

It's weird. I can describe the intricacies of civil war in Iraq off the top of my head. But it took me all day to consider this.

First, let's understand something, David Beckham, while in decline, could have stayed in Europe and had nine teams after him. Beckham, unlike Bonds or Jordan, was always regarded as a team player.

Was he the best player of his time? Hell no. But he is the guy who made Man U work and brought them championships. He grew up in the ManU system and was a lifelong fan. Trading him to Real Madrid really marked the end of his club career, stuck on a team with too many stars and too much money.

And maybe only Pele has been a better ambassador for the sport. He has been eager to work with kids, and his team tours put tons of money in both ManU and Real's pockets when they hit the US and Asia.

Oddly, what drove people nuts about him was not his lifestyle, but his bad decision making on the pitch in international games. Time and again, Beckham would lose his temper or mak a bad decision and cost England a crucial game. But despite his off-pitch lifestyle, he was no prima donna on it.

Sure, he was the guy who defined metrosexual, but he got away with it because people knew that when it came crunch time, he was there.

Unlike the NASL, the MSL is in a far different position, with players already migrating to Europe. It didn't need Beckham to grow, but it needs Beckham to transform. And Beckham is leaving Europe when he still has some skills.

Beckham has long wanted to come to the US, not because he wanted the money, he has tons of endorsement deals which will go long beyond his time on the pitch, but because he can be an ambassador for soccer in the US.

What Beckham wants to do is sell soccer to the people who play it, but drop the sport and help raise the level of the youth game. I mean, if he wanted to play in Europe, he could. But the fact is that he can make his biggest impact by moving soccer to the next level.

He cannot do this alone, but as the level of play in MSL grows, he can help it gain exposure.

When the law doesn't work, try blackmail

2007-01-12T15:53:00.000-05:00

White House Tries Economic Pressure on Lawyers Representing Guantanamo Detainees

I'm sorry, but this is just disgusting. Now that there's a real chance that the might lose in the courts, the White House is trying to put the economic screws on lawyers representing Guantanamo detainees.

This radio interview with Cully Stimson, a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, heralds the start of an organized campaign by the White House to encourage major law firm clients to pressure those firms to drop their pro-bono representation of Guantanamo detainees.

The Washington Post had a forceful editorial about this today, which says almost everything that needs saying:
MOST AMERICANS understand that legal representation for the accused is one of the core principles of the American way. Not, it seems, Cully Stimson, deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs. In a repellent interview yesterday with Federal News Radio, Mr. Stimson brought up, unprompted, the number of major U.S. law firms that have helped represent detainees at Guantanamo Bay.

"Actually you know I think the news story that you're really going to start seeing in the next couple of weeks is this: As a result of a FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] request through a major news organization, somebody asked, 'Who are the lawyers around this country representing detainees down there,' and you know what, it's shocking," he said.

Mr. Stimson proceeded to reel off the names of these firms, adding, "I think, quite honestly, when corporate CEOs see that those firms are representing the very terrorists who hit their bottom line back in 2001, those CEOs are going to make those law firms choose between representing terrorists or representing reputable firms, and I think that is going to have major play in the next few weeks. And we want to watch that play out."

Asked who was paying the firms, Mr. Stimson hinted of dark doings. "It's not clear, is it?" he said. "Some will maintain that they are doing it out of the goodness of their heart, that they're doing it pro bono, and I suspect they are; others are receiving monies from who knows where, and I'd be curious to have them explain that."

It might be only laughable that Mr. Stimson, during the interview, called Guantanamo "certainly, probably, the most transparent and open location in the world."

But it's offensive -- shocking, to use his word -- that Mr. Stimson, a lawyer, would argue that law firms are doing anything other than upholding the highest ethical traditions of the bar by taking on the most unpopular of defendants. It's shocking that he would seemingly encourage the firms' corporate clients to pressure them to drop this work. And it's shocking -- though perhaps not surprising -- that this is the person the administration has chosen to oversee detainee policy at Guantanamo.

It's true that the list of law firms donating time to representing the victims of torture, humiliation (and a total lack of due process) at Guantanamo reads a bit like a who's who of the elite of the corporate bar. And they deserve credit for it.

I'd just add one thing: the first firm to cave on this issue is going to find it awfully hard to recruit elite law students, as they will have demonstrated a serious lack of moral fiber. If you won't stand up for your most desperate clients, what kind of firm are you?

If they can blackmail you over Gitmo, they can blackmail you over ANY client.

Bwaaaah

2007-01-12T13:18:00.000-05:00

You freak

BOXER'S LOW BLOW

January 12, 2007 -- Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer, an appalling scold from California, wasted no time yesterday in dragging the debate over Iraq about as low as it can go - attacking Secre tary of State Condoleezza Rice for being a childless woman.

Boxer was wholly in character for her party - New York's own two Democratic senators, Chuck Schumer and Hillary Rodham Clinton, were predictably opportunistic - but the Golden State lawmaker earned special attention for the tasteless jibes she aimed at Rice.

Rice appeared before the Senate in defense of President Bush's tactical change in Iraq, and quickly encountered Boxer.

"Who pays the price? I'm not going to pay a personal price," Boxer said. "My kids are too old, and my grandchild is too young."

Then, to Rice: "You're not going to pay a particular price, as I understand it, with an immediate family."

Breathtaking.

Simply breathtaking.

We scarcely know where to begin.

The junior senator from California ap parently believes that an accom plished, seasoned diplomat, a renowned scholar and an adviser to two presidents like Condoleezza Rice is not fully qualified to make policy at the highest levels of the American government because she is a single, childless woman.

The same could be said for many people in government.

But the fact is the Post wasn't outraged when Laura Bush said essentially the same thing. No more Ms. Nice Guy. Rice is saying more kids should die, and she doesn't even have a dog. People have stopped being polite.

The fact is that Rice, as far as we know, has no lovers, close relatives or even social life. People are going to throw this in her face.

If I were the Twins, I'd find my ass a 9-5 job quick.

A real GI Bill

2007-01-12T10:15:00.000-05:00

Bob Geiger has this up

Webb Does More For Troops in One Day Than Allen Did In Years

Keeping a promise he made on the campaign trail in 2006, Senator Jim Webb (D-VA) did more for the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan on his first day in the Senate than the man he ousted, George Felix Allen, did in the entire previous Congress.

Going unnoticed in the frenzy of Democrats assuming control of Capitol Hill and George W. Bush seeking to plunge the country deeper into the Iraq quagmire, Webb introduced the Post-9/11 Veterans Educational Assistance Act of 2007, legislation that will provide the newest Veterans with educational benefits like those received by men and women who served in the three decades following World War II.

"As a veteran who hails from a family with a long history of military service, I am proud to offer this bill as my first piece of legislation in the United States Senate," said Webb, in introducing his bill last week. "The G.I. bill program was designed to help veterans readjust to civilian life, avoid high levels of unemployment, and give veterans the opportunity to receive the education and training that they missed while bravely serving in the military."

Webb, a former Secretary of the Navy and a highly-decorated Vietnam Veteran, introduced his legislation to provide enhanced benefits to those serving in the military since September 11, 2001. It will replace the Montgomery G.I. Bill, to which military personnel must contribute -- while earning a low active-duty salary anyway -- and which only provides financial support of up to $800 per month for educational expenses, which may not cover the cost of a full college education.

The Post-9/11 Veterans Educational Assistance Act will pay for Veterans' tuition, books, fees, and other training costs, while also providing a monthly stipend of $1,000 for living expenses, thus making it much more possible for a large number of Veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan to actually be able to complete a college education and build a better life.

"The United States has never erred when it has made sustained new investments in higher education and job training," said Webb. "Enacting the Post-9/11 Veterans Educational Assistance Act of 2007 is not only the right thing to do for our men and women in uniform, but it also is a strong tonic for an economy plagued by growing disparities in wealth, stagnant wages, and the outsourcing of American jobs."

Webb also pointed out that Veterans have enough adjustments to make upon returning to civilian society and those who went into the military in part to get a college education and better their lot in life, deserve the country's support in realizing educational opportunity without additional hardship.

"Better-educated veterans have a more positive readjustment experience," said Webb, who earned a Navy Cross, Silver Star, two Bronze Stars, and two Purple Hearts for his Vietnam service. "This experience lowers the costs of treating post-traumatic stress disorder and other readjustment-related difficulties."

Saying that the limited Montgomery G.I. Bill is "simply insufficient after 9/11," Webb made the case that the extreme adversity, sacrifice and risk endured by those serving in today's military makes providing greater Veterans benefits a matter of fairness and national honor.

"Now our nation is fighting a worldwide war against terrorism. Since 9/11, we have witnessed a sharp increase in the demands placed upon our military," said Webb. "Many of our military members are serving two or three tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. In light of these immense hardships, it is now time to implement a more robust educational assistance program for our heroic veterans who have sacrificed so much for our great Nation."

Within the text of Webb's legislation it says that "the people of the United States greatly value military service and recognize the difficult challenges involved in readjusting to civilian life after wartime service in the Armed Forces." Quick passage of this legislation will show that a Democratic Congress truly does value the troops and that the Commonwealth of Virginia -- which is home to a large number of Veterans -- was wise to elect Webb to replace Allen, who did nothing like this while a member of the do-nothing GOP Congress.

And Webb's going to be there to keep reminding people that patriotism involves supporting the troops in deeds, as well as with words and magnetic ribbons on cars.

"I am a proud Veteran who is honored to serve this great nation," said Webb on his first day as a United States Senator. "As long as I represent Virginians in the United States Senate, I will make it a priority to help protect our brave men and women in uniform."

* * * * *A Personal Postscript: I had a difficult time adjusting when I was discharged from the military and, while I had to work most of the time I spent at San Francisco State University, I was fortunate to be able to attend five years of college on the old G.I. Bill that Webb's legislation will restore.

Having the ability to quickly and easily go from the U.S. Navy straight into being a normal college student, enabled everything I have achieved since. I can also tell you that, being the only person in my family to ever get a college degree, the U.S. government has been paid back many times over in the salary I have been able to earn in my career and the corresponding taxes I have paid -- compared to what I would have contributed to the U.S. Treasury as a manual laborer back home in rural Nebraska.

A robust G.I. Bill set the tone for my adult life and Webb's bill will pave the way for a new generation of Veterans to get the same kick-start to a healthy post-military life.

The GI Bill changed who ran America.

Before WWII, going to college was a matter of luck or money. For most people it was impossible.

How diverse were the changes? Bob Dole went to law school. George Plimpton founded the Paris Review. Charles Rangel, John Conyers and David Obey are among the beneficiaries of the GI currently serving in Congress.

The current, meager GI Bill does little to help veterans become productive members of society. The old GI Bill allowed for class mobility unlike we have ever seen.

Bush will lose the country

2007-01-12T02:27:00.000-05:00

I haven't really had much to say about Bush, lately, reposting the thoughts of others. Because to be honest, I've said this from 2003 and seeing it play out like some horrible dream is no shock.

Even the threats about Iran have been on DK for six months.

But I think Wednesday's speech scared the shit out of a lot of people. If he had left Iran out of it, well, it would have just sucked. But that extra bit of neocon wingnuttery, attack Iran for no clear reason? Well, that made a few people shit their pants.

What our foul, corrupt punditocracy misses is that Bush is losing the people who went along. He may keep 25 percent, but as this goes on, and Odierno and Petraeus recreate the DeLattre Line in Baghdad, and the casualities mount, the people who vote against escalation today, will be voting for impeachment tomorrow.

Bush refuses to listen or alter his plans, even when they fail. Trying to scare Iran after they've had four years to plan how to fuck US troops over with as few fingerprints as possible is just stupid. What if Sistani just says fuck it and calls for a jihad against the US? That is a card he does not want to play, but he isn't going to let Bush bomb Qom either. Bush and his team are simpletons. Sistani will protect Shia Islam, at any price.

It's not like they can send a 500lb bomb through his door.

Too many people think we control events in Iraq. I want to smack Odierno when he says it will take years. I wanted to punch some idiot babling about moving US troops to Kurdistan? As if the Turks will allow them to resupply. We control nothing.

Bush is in this mess because Rove has always acted as if they were the majority. Now that they are not, Rice sounds like a simpleton. Hagel was PISSED today.

A couple of years ago, Larry Eagleburger said, long time GOP factorum Eagleburger said, if Bush moves on Iran, it will be time for impeachment.

When you look at the plan itself, it's fucking insane.

The idea of housing US and Iraqi troops in the same buildings may seem like a good idea, until the frags start flying and the Mahdi Army makes their 3 AM attack. If you're lucky, the frags won't be coming from inside.

27 strongpoints for guerrillas to mortar every night. Jesus. I think if the day comes when Sistani or even Sadr says it's on, a lot of Americans are gonna die in their own bases.

But, in the end, I think America has had enough. Sending the Guard back is an insane political mistake. Two tours for part-time solders?

ABC's Erin Hayes is an especially stupid woman. She interviews soldiers wives and gets vague answers. Duh. Their husband's careers would be ruined if they told the truth. God, interview some anonymously and see what they say. This is destroying families. They know people getting divorces, the fucked up discharges. And they will never tell you the truth unless you protect them.

However, I think Bush will lose the country, and eventually leave in disgrace because his plan will fail. It will fail badly and bloodily and he will be exposed as the weak little man he is and we will not have long to wait.

Pointless

2007-01-12T02:03:00.001-05:00

Who are their bosses?

U.S. Unit Patrolling Baghdad Sees Flaws in Bush Strategy

By Sudarsan Raghavan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, January 12, 2007; A01

...............

The day after his speech, the soldiers of Apache Company went on a mission to the volatile neighborhood of Hurriyah that underscored the challenges confronting U.S. troops as they attempt to clear neighborhoods of sectarian fighters and keep them that way under Iraqi control.

Across Baghdad, Iraq's mostly Shiite security forces have proved unable to keep neighborhoods secure on their own. Sunni Arabs deeply mistrust the army and police, viewing them as a sectarian weapon of the Shiite-led government. Iraqi army commanders say their soldiers lack training and equipment, while some U.S. officials worry that Iraq's troops are too dependent on their American counterparts and will become even more so with the expected surge.

The Stryker rolled through the mud of Camp Liberty and made its way to Hurriyah, a mostly Shiite area nestled west of the Tigris River. Apache Company's mission: to search a few houses for weapons caches based on intelligence reports. Caldwell and his soldiers worried about the intelligence they had been given. It had come from an Iraqi army -- or "IA," in U.S. soldier lingo -- officer a week ago. They wondered whether they were being set up for an ambush.

"It's a joke," said Pfc. Drew Merrell, 22, of Jefferson City, Mo., shaking his head and flashing a smile as the Stryker rolled through Baghdad.

"They feed us what they want," said Spec. Josh Lake, 26, of Ventura, Calif., referring to the intelligence. "I guarantee that everyone in the city knows where we're going. Because the IA told them. The only thing they don't know is how big a force we're coming with."

On this morning, 22 U.S. soldiers were in the Stryker convoy along with one Iraqi interpreter, whom the soldiers called Joey. He didn't want his real name used for security reasons.

"Pretty soon the Shiites will be tired of our presence, just like the Sunnis," said Lake, noting that the squad now makes almost daily trips to Hurriyah.

"The general feeling among us is we're not really doing anything here," Caldwell said. "We clear one neighborhood, then another one fires up. It's an ongoing battle. It never ends."

"We're constantly being told that it's not our fight. It is their fight," said Sgt. Jose Reynoso, 24, of Yuma, Ariz., speaking of the Iraqi army. "But that's not the case. Whenever we go and ask them for guys, they almost always say no, and we have to do the job ourselves."

"You do have corruption problems among the ranks," said Sgt. Justin Hill, 24, of Abilene Tex., the squad leader. "I don't know what they can do about that. They have militias inside them. They are pretty much everywhere."

"The intel they give us and the intel we get are two different things," Lake said.

Caldwell, as he listened to the conversation, leaned his head back and said:

"I want to go back and play my PlayStation."

Bush's fantasyland

2007-01-12T01:18:00.000-05:00

Yes, yes, we will make Iraq a democracy

Bush Sends GIs to his Private Fantasyland

To listen to Bush's speech on Wednesday, you would imagine that al-Qaeda has occupied large swathes of Iraq with the help of Syria and Iran and is brandishing missiles at the US mainland. That the president of the United States can come out after nearly four years of such lies and try to put this fantasy over on the American people is shameful.

The answer to "al-Qaeda's" occupation of neighborhoods in Baghdad and the cities of al-Anbar is then, Bush says, to send in more US troops to "clear and hold" these neighborhoods.

But is that really the big problem in Iraq? Bush is thinking in terms of a conventional war, where armies fight to hold territory. But if a nimble guerrilla group can come out at night and set off a bomb at the base of a large tenement building in a Shiite neighborhood, they can keep the sectarian civil war going. They work by provoking reprisals. They like to hold territory if they can. But as we saw with Fallujah and Tal Afar, if they cannot they just scatter and blow things up elsewhere.

And the main problem is not "al-Qaeda," which is small and probably not that important, and anyway is not really Bin Laden's al-Qaeda. They are just Salafi jihadis who appropriated the name. When their leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was killed, it didn't cause the insurgency to miss a beat. Conclusion: "al-Qaeda" is not central to the struggle. Izzat Ibrahim Duri and the Baath Party are probably the center of gravity of the resistance.

Bush admitted that the Sunni guerrilla destruction of the Askariyah (Golden Dome) shrine at Samarra set off an orgy of sectarian reprisals. But he does not seem to have actually absorbed the lesson here. The guerrillas did not have to hold territory in order to carry out that bombing. They just had to be able to sneak into a poorly guarded old building that Bush did not even know about and blow it up. The symbolic and psychic damage that they did to the Shiites was profound. Blowing up hundreds of worshippers on Ashura had not had nearly this impact, since the damaged shrine was dedicated to the hidden Twelfth Imam or Mahdi, the Shiite promised one. Many religious Shiites in Iraq are now millenarians, desperately waiting for the Promised One to reveal himself and restore the world to justice. The guerrillas hit the symbol of that hope.

There are other such targets. The Shrine of Imam Kadhim at Kadhimiya, the shrine of Ali in Najaf, and the shrine of Husayn in Karbala, and the person of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani himself, also the person of Hujjat al-Islam Muqtada al-Sadr. (The arrogance and ignorance of the US chattering classes is such that they openly talk about "taking out" al-Sadr, as though that would calm the Iraqi Shiites down. Saddam thought like that when he offed Muqtada's father; didn't work.) The US and British military nevertheless seem set to attack the Mahdi Army. Investments in guarding those sites (the most exposed of which is Kahdimiya) would be worth far more than temporarily intimidating angry Sunnis who have picked up a gun in the Dura neighborhood of Baghdad.

Bush could not help taking swipes at Iran and Syria. But the geography of his deployments gives the lie to his singling them out as mischief makers. Why send 4,000 extra troops to al-Anbar province? Why ignore Diyala Province near Iran, which is in flames, or Babel Province southwest of Baghdad? Diyala borders Iran, so isn't that the threat? But wait. Where is al-Anbar? Between Jordan and Baghdad. In other words, al-Anbar opens out into the vast Sunni Arab hinterland that supports the guerrilla movement with money and volunteers, coming in from Jordan. If Syria was the big problem, you would put the extra 4,000 troops up north along the border. If Iran was the big problem, you'd occupy Diyala. But little Jordan is an ally of the US, and Bush would not want to insult it by admitting that it is a major infiltration root for jihadis heading to Iraq.

The clear and hold strategy is not going to work in al-Anbar. Almost everyone there hates the Americans and wants them out. To clear and hold you need a sympathetic or potentially sympathetic civilian population that is being held hostage by militants, and which you can turn by offering them protection from the militants. I don't believe there are very many Iraqi Sunnis who can any longer be turned in that way. The opinion polling suggests that they overwhelmingly support violence against the US.

This strategy may have some successes here and there. It won't win the day, and I'd be surprised if it did not collapse by the end of the summer.

If part of the strategy is to assault the Mahdi Army frontally, that will cause enormous trouble in the Shiite south. I would suggest that PM Nuri al-Maliki's warning to the Mahdi Militia to disarm or face the US military is in fact code. He is telling the Sadrists to lie low while the US mops up the Sunni Arab guerrillas. Sadr's militia became relatively quiescent for a whole year after the Marines defeated it at Najaf in August, 2004. But since it is rooted in an enormous social movement, the militia is fairly easy to reconstitute after it goes into hiding.